Background
The plaintiffs brought action against the town of Penfield, New York, a suburb of Rochester, and against members of the Zoning, Planning, and Town Boards of Penfield, alleging that Penfield's zoning ordinances intentionally and wrongly excluded persons of low and moderate income from living there.
The not-for-profit housing organization Metro-Act of Rochester joined with several Rochester taxpayers as well as low and moderate-income individuals of various racial and ethnic backgrounds were considered jointly as party-plaintiffs to this action. However, the United States District Court dismissed the case, citing that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue. The United States Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal.
The court was tasked to determine if the American rules of standing should be considered part of the 'case or controversy' clause of Article Three of the United States Constitution or, apart from that, if the court can hear cases on "generalized grievances" or in the interest of third parties where none of the complainants have standing.
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 originated in the United States and is still predominantly a U.S. phenomenon, but Canada, as well as several European countries with civil law, have made changes in recent years to allow consumer organizations to bring claims on behalf of consumers.
In common law legal systems, laches is a lack of diligence and activity in making a legal claim, or moving forward with legal enforcement of a right, particularly in regard to equity. This means that it is an unreasonable delay that can be viewed as prejudicing the opposing party. When asserted in litigation, it is an equity defense, that is, a defense to a claim for an equitable remedy.
In law, standing or locus standi is the ability of a party to demonstrate to the court sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case. Standing exists from one of three causes:
- The party is directly subject to an adverse effect by the statute or action in question, and the harm suffered will continue unless the court grants relief in the form of damages or a finding that the law either does not apply to the party or that the law is void or can be nullified. This is called the "something to lose" doctrine, in which the party has standing because they will be directly harmed by the conditions for which they are asking the court for relief.
- The party is not directly harmed by the conditions by which they are petitioning the court for relief but asks for it because the harm involved has some reasonable relation to their situation, and the continued existence of the harm may affect others who might not be able to ask a court for relief. In the United States, this is the grounds for asking for a law to be struck down as violating the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, because while the plaintiff might not be directly affected, the law might so adversely affect others that one might never know what was not done or created by those who fear they would become subject to the law. This is known as the "chilling effects" doctrine.
- The party is granted automatic standing by act of law. Under some environmental laws in the United States, a party may sue someone causing pollution to certain waterways without a federal permit, even if the party suing is not harmed by the pollution being generated. The law allows the plaintiff to receive attorney's fees if they substantially prevail in the action. In some U.S. states, a person who believes a book, film or other work of art is obscene may sue in their own name to have the work banned directly without having to ask a District Attorney to do so.
A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint. If the plaintiff is successful, judgment is in the plaintiff's favor, and a variety of court orders may be issued to enforce a right, award damages, or impose a temporary or permanent injunction to prevent an act or compel an act. A declaratory judgment may be issued to prevent future legal disputes.
In law, a settlement is a resolution between disputing parties about a legal case, reached either before or after court action begins. The term also has other meanings in the context of law. Structured settlements provide for future periodic payments, instead of a one time cash payment.
In the law of the United States, diversity jurisdiction is a form of subject-matter jurisdiction in civil procedure in which a United States district court in the federal judiciary has the power to hear a civil case when the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000 and where the persons that are parties are "diverse" in citizenship or state of incorporation, which generally indicates that they differ in state and/or nationality. Diversity jurisdiction and federal-question jurisdiction constitute the two primary categories of subject matter jurisdiction in U.S. federal courts.
Amount in controversy is a term used in civil procedure to denote the amount at stake in a lawsuit, in particular in connection with a requirement that persons seeking to bring a lawsuit in a particular court must be suing for a certain minimum amount before that court may hear the case.
The Supreme Court of the United States has interpreted the Case or Controversy Clause of Article III of the United States Constitution as embodying two distinct limitations on exercise of judicial review: a bar on the issuance of advisory opinions, and a requirement that parties must have standing.
Federal Election Commission v. Akins, 524 U.S. 11 (1998), was a United States Supreme Court case deciding that an individual could sue for a violation of a federal law pursuant to a statute enacted by the U.S. Congress which created a general right to access certain information.
An indispensable party is a party in a lawsuit whose participation is required for jurisdiction or the purpose of rendering a judgment. In reality, a party may be "necessary" but not indispensable. For example, if they claim an interest in the litigation, that interest may be impeded if they are not joined. That doesn't transform him them into an indispensable party unless their absence threatens some other party's interest. Often, an indispensable party is any party whose rights are directly affected by disposition of the case. Many jurisdictions have rules which provide for an indispensable party to be joined at the discretion of the judge; this is referred to as a nonjoinder of party. In some cases, the inability to join such a party means that the case must be dismissed. In the United States, this is outlined in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 19.
Lauro Lines s.r.l. v. Chasser, 490 U.S. 495 (1989), is the touchstone case in which the United States Supreme Court laid out the law of interlocutory appeals for United States federal courts.
Cort v. Ash, 422 U.S. 66 (1975), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court determined whether a court may imply a cause of action from a criminal statute.
DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case involving the standing of taxpayers to challenge state tax laws in federal court. The Court unanimously ruled that state taxpayers did not have standing under Article III of the United States Constitution to challenge state tax or spending decisions simply by virtue of their status as taxpayers. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the majority opinion, which was joined by all of the justices except for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who concurred separately.
United States v. Interstate Commerce Commission, 337 U.S. 426 (1949), is a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States addressing several issues, including the judicial standard of one party's inability to sue itself, the ability of the United States government specifically to sue federally affiliated departments, and the ability of courts to determine legislative intent. While this decision did not have many broad implications, it did offer a more "common-sense" understanding of determining what constitutes a justiciable controversy.
Sully v. Drennan, 113 U.S. 287 (1885), was an appeal from an order of the Circuit Court for the Southern District of Iowa in the United States remanding to the state court a case which had been removed from the state into the circuit court.
Exclusionary zoning is the use of zoning ordinances to exclude certain types of land uses from a given community. As of the 2010s, exclusionary zoning ordinances are standard in almost all communities. Exclusionary zoning was introduced in the early 1900s, typically to prevent racial and ethnic minorities from moving into middle- and upper-class neighborhoods. Municipalities use zoning to limit the supply of available housing units, such as by prohibiting multi-family residential dwellings or setting minimum lot size requirements. These ordinances raise costs, making it less likely that lower-income groups will move in. Development fees for variance, a building permit, a certificate of occupancy, a filing (legal) cost, special permits and planned-unit development applications for new housing also raise prices to levels inaccessible for lower income people.
Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 297 U.S. 288 (1936), was a United States Supreme Court case that provided the first elaboration of the doctrine of "Constitutional avoidance".
Wikimedia Foundation, et al. v. National Security Agency, et al. is a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation and several other organizations against the National Security Agency (NSA), the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), and other named individuals, alleging mass surveillance of Wikipedia users carried out by the NSA. The suit claims the surveillance system, which NSA calls "Upstream", breaches the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which protects freedom of speech, and the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
Rucho v. Common Cause, No. 18-422, 588 U.S. ___ (2019), is a landmark case of the United States Supreme Court concerning partisan gerrymandering. The Court ruled that while partisan gerrymandering may be "incompatible with democratic principles", the federal courts cannot review such allegations, as they present nonjusticiable political questions outside the remit of these courts.
Ethel Robinson Lawrence was a civil rights activist who was known as the "Rosa Parks of affordable housing". Lawrence was the lead plaintiff in the Mount Laurel, New Jersey litigation for affordable housing, which led to the New Jersey Fair Housing Act, the New Jersey Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) and the Mount Laurel doctrine. In her final years, Lawrence worked closely with attorney Peter O'Connor to start the non-profit organisation Fair Share Housing Development Inc., which built over 200 units for moderate- to low-income tenants in Mount Laurel.
