KOWALSKI, JUDGE, 26TH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT COURT OF MICHIGAN, ET AL. v. TESMER ET AL.
No. 03-407
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Argued October 4, 2004—Decided December 13, 2004
543 U.S. 125
David A. Moran argued the cause for respondents Tesmer et al. With him on the briefs were Michael J. Steinberg, Kary L. Moss, Mark Granzotto, and Steven R. Shapiro.*
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the State of Iowa et al. by Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General of Iowa, Douglas R. Marek, Deputy Attorney General, Darrel Mullins, Assistant Attorney General, and Gene C. Schaerr, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Troy King of Alabama, Charles J. Crist of Florida, Mark J. Bennett of Hawaii, Lisa Madigan of Illinois, Steve Carter of Indiana, Gregory D. Stumbo of Kentucky, Charles C. Foti, Jr., of Louisiana, J. Joseph Curran, Jr., of Maryland, Mike McGrath of Montana, Jon Bruning of Nebraska, Brian Sandoval of Nevada, Jim Petro of Ohio, W. A. Drew Edmondson of Oklahoma, Hardy Myers of Oregon, Henry D. McMaster of South Carolina, Paul G. Summers of Tennessee, Greg Abbott of Texas, Mark L. Shurtleff of Utah, Jerry W. Kilgore of Virginia, and Christine O. Gregoire of Washington; and for Wayne County, Michigan, by Timothy A. Baughman.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the American Bar Association by Dennis W. Archer, Seth P. Waxman, and Paul R. Q. Wolfson; for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers et al. by Anthony J. Franze, Sheila B. Scheuerman, Steven D. Benjamin, and Paul M. Rashkind; and for the National Legal Aid and Defender Association by Elliot H. Scherker and Karen M. Gottlieb.
This casе involves a constitutional challenge to Michigan‘s procedure for appointing appellate counsel for indigent defendants who plead guilty. The only challengers before us are two attorneys who seek to invoke the rights of hypothetical indigents to challenge the procedure. We hold that the attorneys lack standing and therefore do not reach the question of the procedure‘s constitutionality.
In 1994, Michigan amended its Constitution to provide that “an appeal by an accused who pleads guilty or nolo contendere shall be by leave of the court” and not as of right.
A challenge to the Michigan practice was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. The named plaintiffs included the two attorney respondents and three indigents who were denied appellate counsel after pleading guilty. Pursuant to
A day before the statute was to take effect, the District Court issued an order holding the practice and statute unconstitutional. Tesmer v. Granholm, 114 F. Supp. 2d 603 (2000). It ultimately issued an injunction that bound all Michigan state judges, requiring them not to deny appellate counsel to any indigent who pleaded guilty. 114 F. Supp. 2d 622 (2000). A panel of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed. Tesmer v. Granholm, 295 F. 3d 536 (2002). The panel held that Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971), abstention barred the suit by the indigents but that the attorneys had third-party standing to assert the rights of indigents. It then held that the statute was сonstitutional. The Court of Appeals granted rehearing en banc and reversed. Tesmer v. Granholm, 333 F. 3d 683 (2003). The en banc majority agreed with the panel on standing but found that the statute was unconstitutional. Separate dissents were filed, challenging the application of third-party standing and the holding that the statute was unconstitutional. We granted certiorari. 540 U. S. 1148 (2004).
The doctrine of standing asks whether a litigant is entitled to have a federal court resolve his grievance. This inquiry involves “both constitutional limitations on federal-court jurisdiction and prudential limitations on its exercise.” Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 498 (1975). In this case, we do not focus on the constitutional minimum of standing, which flows from Article III‘s case-or-controvеrsy requirement. See Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560 (1992). Instead, we shall assume the attorneys have satisfied Article III and address the alternative threshold question whether they have standing to raise the rights of others. See Ruhrgas AG v. Marathon Oil Co., 526 U. S. 574, 585 (1999).2
We have adhered to the rule that a party “generally must assert his own legal rights and interests, and cannot rest his claim to relief on the legal rights or interests of third parties.” Warth v. Seldin, supra, at 499. This rule assumes that the party with the right has the appropriate incentive to challenge (or not challenge) governmental action and to do so with the necessary zeal and appropriate presentation. See 422 U. S., at 500. It represents a “healthy concern that if the claim is brought by somеone other than one at whom the constitutional protection is aimed,” Secretary of State of Md. v. Joseph H. Munson Co., 467 U. S. 947, 955, n. 5 (1984), the courts might be “called upon to decide abstract questions of wide public significance even though other governmental institutions may be more competent to address the questions and even though judicial intervention may be unnecessary to protect individual rights,” Warth v. Seldin, supra, at 500.
We have not treated this rule as absolute, however, recog-
We have been quite forgiving with these criteria in certain circumstances. “Within the context of the First Amendment,” for example, “the Court has enunciated other concerns that justify a lessening of prudential limitations on standing.” Secretary of State of Md. v. Joseph H. Munson Co., supra, at 956. And “[i]n several cases, this Court has allowed standing to litigate the rights of third parties when enforcement of the challenged restriction against the litigant would result indirectly in the violation of third parties’ rights.” Warth v. Seldin, supra, at 510 (emphasis added) (citing Doe v. Bolton, 410 U. S. 179 (1973); Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965); Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S. 249 (1953)); see Craig v. Boren, 429 U. S. 190 (1976). Beyond these examples—none of which is implicated here—we have not looked favorably upon third-рarty standing. See, e. g., Conn v. Gabbert, 526 U. S. 286, 292-293 (1999) (rejecting an attorney‘s attempt to adjudicate the rights of a client). With this in mind, we turn to apply our “close relationship” and “hindrance” criteria to the facts before us.
The attorneys in this case invoke the attorney-client relationship to demonstrate the requisite closeness. Specifically, they rely on a future attorney-client relationship with as yet unascertained Michigan criminal defendants “who will request, but be denied, the appointment of appellate counsel, based on the operation” of the statute. App. 17a, ¶ 37 (Complaint). In two cases, we have recognized an attorney-client relationship as sufficient to confer third-party standing.
In Department of Labor v. Triplett, supra, we dealt with the Black Lung Benefits Act of 1972, which prohibited attorneys from accepting fees for representing claimants, unless such fees were approved by the appropriate agency or court.
We next consider whether the attorneys have demonstrated that there is a “hindrance” tо the indigents’ advancing their own constitutional rights against the Michigan scheme. Powers v. Ohio, supra, at 411. It is uncontested that an indigent denied appellate counsel has open avenues to argue that denial deprives him of his constitutional rights.
The attorneys argue that, without counsel, these avenues are effectively foreclosed to indigents. They claim that unsophisticated, pro se criminal defendants could not satisfy the necessary procedural requirements, and, if they did, they would be unable to coherently advance the substance of their constitutional claim.
That hypothesis, however, was disproved in the Michigan courts, see, e. g., People v. Jackson, 463 Mich. 949, 620 N. W. 2d 528 (2001) (pro se defendant sought leave to appeal denial of appointment of appellate counsel to the Michigan Court of Appeals and the Michigan Supreme Court); People v. Wilkins, 463 Mich. 949, 620 N. W. 2d 528 (2001) (same), and this Court, see Pet. for Cert. in Halbert v. Michigan, O. T. 2004, No. 03-10198 (pending request for writ of certiorari by a pro se defendant challenging the denial of appellate counsel). While we agree that an attorney would be valuable to a criminal defendant challenging the constitutionality of the scheme, we do not think that the lack of an attorney here is the type of hindranсe necessary to allow another to assert the indigent defendants’ rights. See Powers v. Ohio, supra, at 411.
We also are unpersuaded by the attorneys’ “hindrance” argument on a more fundamental level. If an attorney is all that the indigents need to perfect their challenge in state court and beyond, one wonders why the attorneys asserting this § 1983 action did not attend state court and assist them. We inquired into this question at oral argument but did not receive a satisfactory answer. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 28-29, 35-40. It is a fair inference that the attorneys and the three
“[F]ederal and state courts are complementary systems for administering justice in our Nation. Cooperation and comity, not competition and conflict, are essential to the federal design.” Ruhrgas AG v. Marathon Oil Co., 526 U. S., at 586. The doctrine of Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971), reinforces our federal scheme by preventing a state criminal defendant from asserting ancillary challenges to ongoing state criminal procedures in federal court. Id., at 54-55.
In this case, the three indigent criminal defendants who were originally plaintiffs in this § 1983 action were appropriately dismissed under Younger. As the Court of Appeals unanimously reсognized, they had ongoing state criminal proceedings and ample avenues to raise their constitutional challenge in those proceedings.3 333 F. 3d, at 690-691. There also was no extraordinary circumstance requiring federal intervention. Ibid. An unwillingness to allow the Younger principle to be thus circumvented is an additional reason to deny the attorneys third-party standing.4
In sum, we hold that the attorneys do not have third-party standing to assert the rights of Michigan indigent defendants denied appellate counsel. We agree with the dissenting opinion in the Court of Appeals that “it would be a short step from the . . . grant of third-party standing in this case to a holding that lawyers generally have third-party standing to bring in court the claims of future unascertained clients.”5 333 F. 3d, at 709 (Rogers, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE THOMAS, concurring.
That this case is even remotely close demonstrates that our third-party standing cases have gone far astray. We have granted third-party standing in a number of cases to litigants whose relationships with the directly affected individuals were at best remote. We have held, for instance, that beer vendors have standing to raise the rights of their prospective young male customers, see Craig v. Boren, 429 U. S. 190, 192-197 (1976); that criminal defendants have standing to raise the rights of jurors excluded from serviсe,
It is doubtful whether a party who has no personal constitutional right at stake in a case should ever be allowed to litigate the constitutional rights of others. Before Truax v. Raich, 239 U. S. 33, 38-39 (1915), and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510, 535-536 (1925), this Court adhered to the rule that “[a] court will not listen to an objection made to the constitutionality of an act by a party whose rights it does not affect and who has therefore no interest in defeating it.” Clark v. Kansas City, 176 U. S. 114, 118 (1900) (internal quotation marks omitted).* This made sense. Litigants who have no personal right at stake may have very different interests from the individuals whose rights they are raising. Moreover, absent a personal right, a litigant has no cause of action (or defense), and thus no right to relief. It mаy be too late in the day to return to this traditional view. But even assuming it makes sense to grant litigants
Because the Court‘s opinion is a reasonable application of our precedents, I join it in full.
*See also Tyler v. Judges of Court of Registration, 179 U. S. 405, 406-407 (1900); Davis & Farnum Mfg. Co. v. Los Angeles, 189 U. S. 207, 220 (1903); Owings v. Norwood‘s Lessee, 5 Cranch 344, 348 (1809) (Marshall, C. J.); In re Wellington, 33 Mass. 87, 96 (1834) (Shaw, C. J.); Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S. 249, 264-266, and n. 6 (1953) (Vinson, C. J., dissenting).
JUSTICE GINSBURG, with whom JUSTICE STEVENS and JUSTICE SOUTER join, dissenting.
Plaintiffs-respondents Arthur M. Fitzgerald and Michael D. Vogler are Michigan attorneys who have routinely received appointments to represent defendants in state-court criminal appeals, including appeals from plea-based convictions. They assert third-party standing to challenge а state law limiting an indigent‘s right to counsel: As codified in
“who plea[d] guilty, guilty but mentally ill, or nolo contendere shall not have appellate counsel appointed for review of the defendant‘s conviction or sentence.”
The attorneys before us emphasize that indigent defendants generally are unable to navigate the appellate process pro se. In view of that reality, the attorneys brought this action under
“Ordinarily,” attorneys Fitzgerald and Vogler acknowledge, “one may not claim standing . . . to vindicate the cоnstitutional rights of [a] third party.” Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S. 249, 255 (1953). The Court has recognized exceptions to the general rule, however, when certain circumstances combine: (1) “The litigant [has] suffered an ‘injury in fact,’ . . . giving him or her a ‘sufficiently concrete interest’ in the outcome of the issue in dispute“; (2) “the litigant [has] a close relation to the third party“; and (3) “there [exists] some hindrance to the third party‘s ability to protect his or her own interests.” Powers v. Ohio, 499 U. S. 400, 411 (1991) (quot-
As to injury in fact, attorneys Fitzgerald and Vogler alleged in their complaint that
Nor, under our precedent, should attorneys Fitzgerald and Vogler encounter a “close relation” shoal. Our prior decisions do not warrant the distinction between an “existing” relationship and a “hypothetical” relationship that the Court advances today. Ante, at 131. See, e. g., Carey v. Population Services Int‘l, 431 U. S. 678, 683 (1977) (corporate distributor of contraceptives could chаllenge state law limiting sale of its products, “not only in its own right but also on behalf of its potential customers” (emphasis added)); Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479, 481 (1965) (noting that in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925), “the owners of private schools were entitled to assert the rights of potential pupils and their parents,” and in Barrows, “a white defendant . . . was allowed to raise . . . the rights of prospective Negro purchasers” (emphases added)).
Thus, as I see it, this case turns on the last of the three third-party standing inquiries, here, the existence of an impediment to the indigent defendants’ effective assertion of their own rights, through litigation. I note first that the Court has approached this requirement with a degree of elasticity. See id., at 216 (Burger, C. J., dissenting) (males between the ages of 18 and 21 who sought to purchase 3.2% beer faced no serious obstacle to asserting their own rights). The hindrance faced by a rightholder need only be “genuine,”
To determine whether the indigent defendants are impeded from asserting their own rights, one must recognize the incapacities under which these defendants labor and the сomplexity of the issues their cases may entail. According to the Department of Justice, approximately eight out of ten state felony defendants use court-appointed lawyers. U. S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, C. Harlow, Defense Counsel in Criminal Cases 1, 5 (Nov. 2000), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/dccc.pdf (all Internet materials as visited Dec. 8, 2004, and available in Clerk of Court‘s case file). Approximately 70% of indigent defendants represented by appointed counsel plead guilty, and 70% of those convicted are incarcerated. Id., at 6 (Tables 10-11). It is likely that many of these indigent defendants, in common with 68% of the state prison population, did not complete high school, U. S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, C. Harlow, Education and Correctional Populations 1 (Jan. 2003), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/ecp.pdf, and many lack the most basic literacy skills, U. S. Dept. of Ed., National Center for Education Statistics, Literacy Behind Prison Walls xviii, 10, 17 (Oct. 1994) (NCES 1994-102), available at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs94/94102.pdf. A Department of Education study found that about seven out of ten inmates fall in the lowest two out of five levels of literacy—marked by an inability to do such basic tasks as write a brief letter to explain an error on a credit card bill, use a bus schedule, or state in writing an argument made in a lengthy newspaper article. Id., at 10, App. A (Interpreting the Literacy Scales). An inmate so handicapped surely
These indigent and poorly educated defendants face appeals from guilty pleas often no less complex than other appeals. An indigent defendant who pleads guilty may still raise on appeal
“constitutional defects that are irrelevant to his factual guilt, double jeopardy claims requiring no further factual record, jurisdictional defects, challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence at the preliminary examination, preserved entrapment claims, mental comрetency claims, factual basis claims, claims that the state had no right to proceed in the first place, including claims that a defendant was charged under an inapplicable statute, and claims of ineffective assistance of counsel.” People v. Bulger, 462 Mich. 495, 561, 614 N. W. 2d 103, 133-134 (2000) (Cavanagh, J., dissenting) (citations omitted).
The indigent defendant pursuing his own appeal must also navigate Michigan‘s procedures for seeking leave to appeal after sentencing on a guilty plea. Michigan‘s stated Rule requires a defendant to file an application for appeal within 21 days after entry of the judgment.
The Court, agreeing with Judge Rogers’ dissent from the en banc Sixth Circuit decision, writes that rеcognizing third-party standing here would allow lawyers generally to assert standing to champion their potential clients’ rights. Ante, at 134, n. 5. For example, a medical malpractice attorney could challenge a tort reform statute on behalf of a future client or a Social Security lawyer could challenge new regulations. Ibid.; Tesmer v. Granholm, 333 F. 3d 683, 709-710 (CA6 2003). In such cases, however, in marked contrast to the instant case, the persons directly affected—malpractice plaintiffs or benefits claimants—would face no unusual obstacle in securing the aid of counsel to attack the disadvantageous statutory or regulatory change. There is no cause, therefore, to allow an attorney to challenge the benefit- or award-reducing provision in a suit brought in the attorney‘s name. The party whose interests the provision directly impacts can instead mount the challenge with the aid of counsel.
This case is “unusual because it is the deprivation of counsel itself that prevents indigent defendants from protecting
The Court is “unpersuaded by the attorneys’ ‘hindrance’ argument,” ante, at 132, in the main, because it sees a clear path for Fitzgerald and Vogler: They could have “attend[ed] state court and assist[ed] [indigent defendants,]” ibid. Had the attorneys taken this course, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of criminal defendants would have gone uncounseled while the attorneys afforded assistance to a few individuals. In order to protect the rights of all indigent defendants, the attorneys sought prospective classwidе relief to prevent the statute from taking effect. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 41 (“The problem was we had to file this litigation before the statute went into effect because once the statute went into effect, thousands of Michigan indigents would be denied the right to counsel every year and would suffer probably irreparable damage to their right to appeal.“).
This case implicates none of the concerns underlying the Court‘s prudential criteria. The general prohibition against third-party standing ““frees the Court not only from unnecessary pronouncement on constitutional issues, but also from premature interpretations of statutes in areas where their constitutional application might be cloudy,’ and it assures the court that the issues before it will be concrete and sharply presented.” Munson, 467 U. S., at 955 (quoting United States v. Raines, 362 U. S. 17, 22 (1960); citation omitted). Attorneys Fitzgerald and Vogler have “properly . . . frame[d] the issues and present[ed] them with the necessary adversar-
The Court concludes that the principle of Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971), “is an additional reason to deny the attorneys third-party standing.” Ante, at 133. Whether a federal court should abstain under Younger is, of course, distinct from whether a party has standing to sue. See 401 U. S., at 41-42 (dismissing three appellees on standing grounds before addressing the abstention question). Younger “[has] little force in the absence of a pending stаte proceeding.” Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U. S. 452, 462 (1974) (quoting Lake Carriers’ Assn. v. MacMullan, 406 U. S. 498, 509 (1972)). “When no state criminal proceeding is pending at the time the federal complaint is filed, federal intervention does not result in duplicative legal proceedings or disruption of the state criminal justice system; nor can federal intervention, in that circumstance, be interpreted as reflecting negatively upon the state court‘s ability to enforce constitutional principles.” 415 U. S., at 462; accord Doran v. Salem Inn, Inc., 422 U. S. 922, 930 (1975). Attorneys Fitzgerald and Vogler filed this suit before the Michigan statute took effect. At that time, no state criminal proceeding governed by the statute existed with which this suit could interfere.6
In sum, this case presents an unusual if not unique case of defеndants facing near-insurmountable practical obstacles to protecting their rights in the state forum: First, it is the deprivation of counsel itself that prevents indigent defend-
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For the reasons stated, I would affirm the en banc Sixth Circuit decision that attorneys Fitzgerald and Vogler have standing to maintain the instant action and would proceed to the merits of the controversy.