Standing and mootness takes center stage in this disability rights case against the State of New York

Suing under the disability discrimination laws, the disabled plaintiffs and a disability rights organization allege the New York State Department of Health waited too long to transfer disabled individuals from restrictive institutional facilities to community-based residential settings. The case was dismissed at the district court, but the Court of Appeals revives the claim for the individual plaintiffs but not the organization, which lacks standing to sue.

The case is AH v. New York State Dept. of Health, issued on August 13. First, the organizational claim. Disability Rights New York is a plaintiff, and they obviously have an interest in the outcome of this case. SRNY claims it has standing because it would stand in the shoes of individuals with disabilities. The Court of Appeals holds that this "novel theory of congressionally authorized representational standing." SRNY argues that when Congress passed the relevant statute, it granted DSNY the right to bring suit in its own name on behalf of disabled individuals. But the Second Circuit says this has no basis in Supreme Court precedent. The Second Circuit holds that Congress cannot erase the constitutional standing rules (under Article III) "by statutorily granting the right to sue to a plaintiff who would not otherwise have standing."

Standing may not be a sexy issue, but it is an important issue. Organizations have standing to sue in certain instances, and when they can do so, they bring resources and expertise to the table and can advocate for their constituents in a way that perhaps their constituents cannot. But, as noted above, the rules for this are strict, and DRNY cannot satisfy them in this case.

As for the individual plaintiffs, the district court held their claims were moot based on pre-motion letters that convinced the trial judge that the claims were no longer justiciable. The state's letter said the plaintiffs had been moved out of their facilities and there was nothing left to sue over. The Court of Appeals (Park, Lee and Perez, dissenting in part) reverses, holding that letter briefs on this issue are not enough when the mootness rules require that the parties be afforded more due process to make their case, usually through full briefing, which allows the parties to develop the record. While a letter brief might sometimes do the trick, that is a rare occurrence, only applicable when the issues were primarily legal and the lawsuit had substantial deficiencies. Not the case here. It is simply not obvious the issues in this case are moot. The case returns to the district court for full briefing on this issue.

Judge Perez dissents from the standing portion of the ruling, starting that the majority has misread Supreme Court precedent and applied the standing rules too rigidly in ruling against DRNY. Judge Perez writes:

the majority opinion assumes, without analysis, that Congress has no role to play in articulating the relationships that can support representational standing, that the courts alone are the supreme federal lawmakers in this area, and that a few discrete doctrinal categories exclusively occupy the field. This view rests on a surface-level reading of precedent and fails to grapple with the complex interplay between the legislative and judicial powers throughout the Supreme Court’s standing cases. In fact, as explained below, the statutes at issue here fit comfortably within Congress’s limited, but nonetheless meaningful, power to shape the standing inquiry within the boundaries set by Article III.