''Allen v. Wright'', 468 U.S. 737 (1984), was a

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

case that determined that citizens do not have

standing Standing, also referred to as orthostasis, is a position in which the body is held in an ''erect'' ("orthostatic") position and supported only by the feet. Although seemingly static, the body rocks slightly back and forth from the ankle in the s ...

to sue a federal

government agency A government or state agency, sometimes an appointed commission, is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, such as an administrati ...

based on the influence that the agency's determinations might have on third parties.

Background

The

Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory ta ...

denies tax-exempt status under the Internal Revenue Code to racially discriminatory private schools, and has established guidelines and procedures for determining whether a particular school is in fact racially nondiscriminatory. As a consequence, those private schools deemed by the IRS to be racially discriminatory are not eligible to receive tax deductible charitable contributions.

Plaintiff A plaintiff ( Π in legal shorthand) is the party who initiates a lawsuit (also known as an ''action'') before a court. By doing so, the plaintiff seeks a legal remedy. If this search is successful, the court will issue judgment in favor of the p ...

s/respondents, parents of

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

children in seven states where public schools had recently been

desegregate Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups, usually referring to races. Desegregation is typically measured by the index of dissimilarity, allowing researchers to determine whether desegregation efforts are having impact o ...

d, brought a nationwide

class action lawsuit A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class action ...

against the Internal Revenue Service in

federal district court The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district cou ...

, contending that IRS guidelines and procedures for determining whether private schools were racially discriminatory, and subsequent denial of tax exempt status to such schools, were insufficient. Federal law prohibited tax-exempt status to private schools that discriminate on the basis of race, but the parents contended that the standards the IRS used to determine if a school was discriminating were not capable of identifying all of the discriminating private schools. White parents were therefore able to avoid integration by sending their children to the private schools and deducting charitable contributions to the institution, thereby making it harder for black children to attend integrated schools. The plaintiffs sued the IRS and W. Wayne Allen was granted permission to intervene as the defendant in his official capacity as the chairman of the board of

Briarcrest Christian School Briarcrest Christian School is a private, coeducational, Christian school in Eads, an unincorporated area of Shelby County, Tennessee. The school was founded as a segregation academy during the racial integration of public schools in Memphis, Tenne ...

, a

segregation academy Segregation academies are private schools in the Southern United States that were founded in the mid-20th century by white parents to avoid having their children attend desegregated public schools. They were founded between 1954, when the U.S. ...

founded in 1973 in response to the desegregation of Memphis city schools. Respondents also alleged that many racially segregated private schools (

segregation academies Segregation academies are private schools in the Southern United States that were founded in the mid-20th century by white parents to avoid having their children attend desegregated public schools. They were founded between 1954, when the U.S. ...

) were created or expanded in respondents' communities at the time the public schools were undergoing desegregation, and had received

tax exemption Tax exemption is the reduction or removal of a liability to make a compulsory payment that would otherwise be imposed by a ruling power upon persons, property, income, or transactions. Tax-exempt status may provide complete relief from taxes, redu ...

s despite the IRS policy and guidelines; and that these unlawful tax exemptions harmed respondents in that they constituted tangible

financial aid Student financial aid in the United States is funding that is available exclusively to students attending a post-secondary educational institution in the United States. This funding is used to assist in covering the many costs incurred in the p ...

for racially segregated educational institutions, and encouraged the organization and expansion of institutions that provided segregated educational opportunities for white students avoiding attendance in the public schools. Respondents did not allege that their children had ever applied or would ever apply for admission to any private school. Respondents sought declaratory and

injunctive relief An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. ("The court of appeals ... has exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, suspend (in whole or in par ...

. The District Court dismissed the complaint on the ground that respondents lacked standing to bring the suit and the Court of Appeals reversed. The United States Supreme Court granted cert. Two injuries were alleged: # Direct harm by government financial aid (through allowing tax deductions for donations) to discriminatory schools. This was argued to be a stigmatic injury because of the appearance of government approval for discrimination against Black people. # Tax exemptions for discriminatory schools impaired the ability of Black people to force desegregation of public schools, because white parents would simply withdraw their children from public schools and place them in discriminatory private schools.

Issue

The Court framed the issue as whether the plaintiffs had

to bring the lawsuit.

Result

The Court said that the plaintiffs had no standing to bring this suit:

In essence the question of standing is whether the litigant is entitled to have the court decide the merits of the dispute or of particular issues. Standing doctrine embraces... the general prohibition on a litigant's raising another person's legal rights, the rule barring adjudication of generalized grievances more appropriately addressed in the representative branches, and the requirement that a plaintiff's complaint fall within the zone of interests protected by the law invoked. The requirement of standing, however, has a core component derived directly from the Constitution. A plaintiff must allege personal injury fairly traceable to defendant’s allegedly unlawful conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief.

The court found that the asserted right to hold the government to the law is not enough by itself to create standing to sue. Nor is discrimination enough unless the plaintiff is personally denied equal treatment by the government. Here, the link between IRS standards and school discrimination was too tenuous. The Court concluded that the doctrine of the

separation of powers Separation of powers refers to the division of a state's government into branches, each with separate, independent powers and responsibilities, so that the powers of one branch are not in conflict with those of the other branches. The typic ...

dictated this result, because otherwise the courts could always be called upon to restructure the

Executive branch The Executive, also referred as the Executive branch or Executive power, is the term commonly used to describe that part of government which enforces the law, and has overall responsibility for the governance of a State (polity), state. In poli ...

Dissents

Justice Brennan wrote a

dissenting opinion A dissenting opinion (or dissent) is an opinion in a legal case in certain legal systems written by one or more judges expressing disagreement with the majority opinion of the court which gives rise to its judgment. Dissenting opinions are no ...

complaining that the use of separation of powers is a truism. He opined that the injury of the children's opportunities was enough to grant standing to sue.

Justice Stevens John Paul Stevens (April 20, 1920 – July 16, 2019) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1975 to 2010. At the time of his retirement, he was the second-olde ...

wrote that the allegation really is that the government is subsidizing

white flight White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They refer ...

, which is sufficient to allow standing – the harm (lack of desegregated schools) was traceable to government conduct. Stevens also asserted that standing has nothing to do with separation of powers.

References

External links