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Do voters have the proper legal standing to challenge the Federal Election Commission's decisions regarding political committees?
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Haworth, U. Often the fact that an interest is abstract and the fact that it is widely shared go hand in hand. But their association is not invariable, and where a harm is concrete, though widely shared, the Court has found "injury in fact. Thus the fact that a political forum may be more readily available where an injury is widely shared while counseling against, say, interpreting a statute as conferring standing does not, by itself, automatically disqualify an interest for Article III purposes. Such an interest, where sufficiently concrete, may count as an "injury in fact.

Lujan, supra, at ; Shaw v. Hunt, U. We conclude that, similarly, the informational injury at issue here, di-. Respondents have also satisfied the remaining two constitutional standing requirements. The harm asserted is "fairly traceable" to the FEC's decision about which respondents complain. Of course, as the FEC points out, Brief for Petitioner , it is possible that even had the FEC agreed with respondents' view of the law, it would still have decided in the exercise of its discretion not to require AlP AC to produce the information.

But that fact does not destroy Article III "causation," for we cannot know that the FEC would have exercised its prosecutorial discretion in this way. Agencies often have discretion about whether or not to take a particular action. Yet those adversely affected by a discretionary agency decision generally have standing to complain that the agency based its decision upon an improper legal ground. Gardner, U. Volpe, U.

FEC v. Akins by A. Biographer

If a reviewing court agrees that the agency misinterpreted the law, it will set aside the agency's action and remand the case-even though the agency like a new jury after a mistrial might later, in the exercise of its lawful discretion, reach the same result for a different reason. SEC v. Chenery Corp.


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Thus respondents' "injury in fact" is "fairly traceable" to the FEC's decision not to issue its complaint, even though the FEC might reach the same result exercising its discretionary powers lawfully. For similar reasons, the courts in this case can "redress" respondents' "injury in fact. Finally, the FEC argues that we should deny respondents standing because this case involves an agency's decision not to undertake an enforcement action-an area generally not subject to judicial review. Brief for Petitioner 23, In Heckler, this Court noted that agency enforcement decisions "ha[ve] traditionally been 'committed to agency discretion,'" and concluded that Congress did not intend to alter that tradition in enacting the AP A.

We deal here with a statute that explicitly indicates the contrary. In sum, respondents, as voters, have satisfied both prudential and constitutional standing requirements. They may bring this petition for a declaration that the FEC's dismissal of their complaint was unlawful. See 2 U. The second question presented in the FEC's petition for certiorari is whether an organization that otherwise satisfies the Act's definition of a "political committee," and thus is subject to its disclosure requirements, nonetheless falls outside that definition because "its major purpose" is not "the nomination or election of candidates.


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The Court reiterated in Federal Election Comm'n v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc. The FEC here interpreted this language as narrowing the scope of the statutory term "political committee," wherever applied. It read this Court's narrowing construction of the term "political committee" as turning on the First Amendment problems presented by regulation of "independent expenditures" i.

The Court of Appeals concluded that the language in this Court's prior decisions narrowing the definition of "political committee" did not apply where the special First Amendment "independent expenditure" problem did not exist. The Solicitor General argues that this Court's narrowing definition of "political committee" applies not simply in the context of independent expenditures, but across the board.

We cannot squarely address that matter, however, because of the unusual and complex circumstances in which this case arises. The FEC held that the statute's exception to the "expenditure" definition for communications by a "membership organization" did not apply because many of the persons who belonged to AlPAC were not "members" as defined by FEC regulation. The FEC acknowledged, however, that this was a "close question. In particular, the FEC thought that many of the persons who belonged to AlP AC lacked sufficient control of the organization's policies to qualify as "members" for purposes of the Act.

A few months later, however, the Court of Appeals overturned the FEC's regulations defining "members," in part because that court thought the regulations defined membership organizations too narrowly in light of an organization's "First Amendment right to communicate with its 'members. Federal Election Comm'n, 69 F. The FEC has subsequently issued proposed rules redefining "members.

The consequence for our consideration of Question Two now is that the FEC's new rules defining "membership organization" could significantly affect the interpretive issue presented by this question. If the Court of Appeals is right in saying that this Court's narrowing interpretation of "political committee" in Buckley reflected First Amendment concerns, F.

The scope of the "membership communications" exception could also affect our evaluation of the Solicitor General's related argument that First Amendment concerns reflected in Buck ley's narrowing interpretation are present whenever the Act requires disclosure. In any event, it is difficult to decide the. CIO, U.

Federal Election Commission v. Akins

And, a considered determination of the scope of the statutory exemption that Congress enacted to address membership communications would helpfully inform our consideration of the "major purpose" test. The upshot, in our view, is that we should permit the FEC to address, in the first instance, the issue presented by Question Two. We can thereby take advantage of the relevant agency's expertise, by allowing it to develop a more precise rule that may dispose of this case, or at a minimum, will aid the Court in reaching a more informed conclusion.

In our view, the FEC should proceed to determine whether or not AlP AC's expenditures qualify as "membership communications," and thereby fall outside the scope of "expenditures" that could qualify it as a "political committee.

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If, on the other hand, the FEC decides that AlP AC's activities fall within the "membership communications" exception, the matter will become moot. For these reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. The provision of law at issue in this case is an extraordinary one, conferring upon a private person the ability to bring an Executive agency into court to compel its enforce-.

Despite its liberality, the Administrative Procedure Act does not allow such suits, since enforcement action is traditionally deemed "committed to agency discretion by law. If provisions such as the present one were commonplace, the role of the Executive Branch in our system of separated and equilibrated powers would be greatly reduced, and that of the Judiciary greatly expanded. Because this provision is so extraordinary, we should be particularly careful not to expand it beyond its fair meaning. In my view the Court's opinion does that.

Indeed, it expands the meaning beyond what the Constitution permits. It is clear that the Federal Election Campaign Act of FECA or Act does not intend that all persons filing complaints with the Federal Election Commission have the right to seek judicial review of the rejection of their complaints.

This is evident from the fact that the Act permits a complaint to be filed by "[a]ny person who believes a violation of this Act The interpretation that the Court gives the latter provision deprives it of almost all its limiting force. Any voter can sue to compel the agency to require registration of an entity as a political committee, even though the "aggrievement" consists of nothing more than the deprivation of access to information whose public availability would have been one of the consequences of registration.

This seems to me too much of a stretch. It should be borne in mind that the agency action complained of here is not the refusal to make available information in its possession that the Act requires to be disclosed. A person de-. What the respondents complain of in this suit, however, is not the refusal to provide information, but the refusal for an allegedly improper reason to commence an agency enforcement action against a third person. That refusal itself plainly does not render respondents "aggrieved" within the meaning of the Act, for in that case there would have been no reason for the Act to differentiate between "person" in subsection a l and "party aggrieved" in subsection a 8.

Respondents claim that each of them is elevated to the special status of a "party aggrieved" by the fact that the requested enforcement action if it was successful would have had the effect, among others, of placing certain information in the agency's possession, where respondents, along with everyone else in the world, would have had access to it. It seems to me most unlikely that the failure to produce that effect-both a secondary consequence of what respondents immediately seek, and a consequence that affects respondents no more and with no greater particularity than it affects virtually the entire population-would have been meant to set apart each respondent as a "party aggrieved" as opposed to just a rejected complainant within the meaning of the statute.

This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that this citizen-suit provision was enacted two years after this Court's decision in United States v. Richardson had said that a plaintiff's complaint that the Government was unlawfully depriving him of information he needed to.

And finally, a narrower reading of "party aggrieved" is supported by the doctrine of constitutional doubt, which counsels us to interpret statutes, if possible, in such fashion as to avoid grave constitutional questions.

See United States ex rel. Attorney General v. DeBartolo Corp. Trades Council, U. Even if one disagrees with that judgment, however, it is clear from Richardson that the question is a close one, so that the statute ought not be interpreted to present it. In Richardson, we dismissed for lack of standing a suit whose "aggrievement" was precisely the "aggrievement" respondents assert here: the Government's unlawful refusal to place information within the public domain.

The only difference, in fact, is that the aggrievement there was more direct, since the Government already had the information within its possession, whereas here respondents seek enforcement action that will bring information within the Government's possession and then require the information to be made public.

The plaintiff in Richardson challenged the Government's failure to disclose the expenditures of the Central Intelligence Agency CIA , in alleged violation of the constitutional requirement, Art. It was alleged in Richardson that the Government had denied a right conferred by the Constitution, whereas respondents here assert a right conferred by statute-but of course "there is absolutely no basis for making the Article III inquiry turn on the source of the asserted right.

The Court today distinguishes Richardson on a different basisa basis that reduces it from a landmark constitutional holding to a curio. According to the Court, "Richardson focused upon taxpayer standing, In addition to being a silly distinction, given the weighty governmental purpose underlying the "generalized grievance" prohibition-viz. It is true enough that the narrow question presented in Richardson was "'[w]hether a federal taxpayer has standing,'" id.