Elizabeth Cady Stanton Tr. v. Neronha

691 F.Supp.3d 432

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON TRUST, Plaintiff, v. Peter NERONHA, Attorney General, State of Rhode Island, Defendant.

No. 1:22-cv-00245-MSM-LDA

United States District Court, D. Rhode Island

Signed September 8, 2023

Amy G. Rice, Law Offices of Amy Rice, Newport, RI, Megan E. Sheehan, Sheehan & Associates, Barrington, RI, for Plaintiff.

T. Evan Eosten Fisher, RI Department of Attorney General, Civil Division, Providence, RI, Etie-Lee Z. Schaub, Providence Law Department, Providence, RI, for Defendant.

MEMORANDUM & ORDER

Mary S. McElroy, United States District Judge.

I. INTRODUCTION

On July 9, 1848, centered around a visit by noted suffragette and abolitionist Lucretia Mott, the first reported women's rights convention opened in Seneca Falls, New York. Among the Quaker organizers, although not a Quaker herself, was Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Standing before a crowd packed into Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York, thirty-two-year-old Elizabeth Cady Stanton proclaimed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men and women are created equal." The intent of her statement was clear - to give new meaning to Jefferson's often-quoted phrase from the Declaration of Independence. For the first time in an organized public setting, women found their voices and directed their attention to the injustices that for centuries had defined and circumscribed their lives. Here, a group of women was insisting that they were men's equal. This was a momentous assertion, a momentous event. The July 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and its declaration of Rights and Sentiments formally initiated the struggle for women's equality and justice.

Sally McMillen, Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Movement 71 (2008). It was not until 1923, 100 years ago, that the Lucretia Mott Amendment, enshrining Stanton's declaration in what would ultimately be called the Equal Rights Amendment ("ERA"), was introduced in Congress.¹ Judiciary committees of both chambers held hearings in every year after 1923, but it took until 1970 for the proposal to make it to the House Floor. By a vote of 352 to 15, the body proposed its ratification as the Twenty-seventh² Amendment to the United States Constitution. Illinois v. Ferriero, 60 F.4th 704, 711-12 (D.C. Cir. 2023). The Senate, however, did not take it up and it lapsed. Two years later, both chambers passed the resolution proposing the Amendment for ratification and submitted it to the 50 states. Contained within the resolution, although not the text of the ERA, was a seven-year deadline within which three-quarters of the states, 38 of them, were required to vote affirmatively for the Amendment to be ratified. Id. at 712.

As of 1982 only 35 states had voted to ratify, even though the deadline had been extended by three years.³ For the next 30 years, the ERA was presumably considered dead, but in 2018, Nevada ratified it, followed quickly by Illinois and Virginia. Id. at 713. Since then, a battle to accord vitality and validity to the ERA has been fought on dual fronts. In one arena, twenty Attorneys General wrote to the leadership in both Congressional chambers on February 22, 2020, urging them to bring to the floor two bipartisan resolutions removing the deadline for ratification. (ECF No. 5 at 18-21, Exh. A). Among the signatories, which included Attorneys General from all six New England states, was the defendant, Peter F. Neronha, Attorney General of the State of Rhode Island.⁴ In April 2023, a Senate vote to validate the ERA failed, gaining only 51 of the necessary 60 votes. Katharine Jackson, US Equal Rights Amendment Blocked Again, a Century After Introduction, US News (Apr. 27, 2023, 6:02 AM), https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2023-04-27/us-senate-to-vote-on-equal-rights-amendment-a-century-after-introduction.

The second arena, the location of this dispute, is in the courts. The instant complaint is brought by the advocacy organization, the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Trust ("Trust"), a "national 501(c)(3) organization whose mission includes education and advocacy for women's constitutional equality and rights." (ECF No. 1, ¶ 9.) Employing several different legal strategies, the Trust and other proponents of the ERA have filed actions in at least six courts, including this one.⁵ In this action, as in several others, the Trust requests a declaration that the ERA is a valid Amendment to the Constitution; based on that proposition, it seeks a Writ of Mandamus to require the Attorney General to undertake a comprehensive review of "all sex discriminatory laws, policies and programs in Rhode Island, and bring them into full compliance with the ERA." Id. ¶ 7. In some cases, it has sued the Archivist of the United States ("Archivist") seeking to require him to publish and certify the ERA as a valid part of the Constitution.⁶

In Equal Means Equal v. Ferriero, 3 F.4th 24, 26 (1st Cir. 2021), advocacy groups sued the Archivist. In Virginia v. Ferriero, 525 F. Supp. 3d 36, 40 (D.D.C. 2021) and Illinois v. Ferriero, 60 F.4th 704, 713 (D.C. Cir. 2023), two of the three states which had recently ratified the ERA sued the Archivist to recognize their post-deadline ratifications as valid. And in the posture most like this one, the Trust sued the Attorneys General of Michigan and of New York to carry out the ERA. Elizabeth Cady Stanton Trust v. Nessel, No. 22-000066-MB, 2023 WL 3259399, at *1 (Mich. Ct. Cl. Apr. 12, 2023); Elizabeth Cady Stanton Trust v. James, N.Y. Sup. Ct., Albany County, June 26, 2023, Hartman, J., Index No. 903819-22 (hereafter "James").

The Michigan and New York actions are virtually identical to this one, pursuing a declaration that the ERA is "valid and enforceable, as well as a writ of mandamus to compel defendant 'to identify and repair all sex discriminatory laws, policies and programs in [the state], to bring them into compliance with the ERA.' " Nessel, 2023 WL 3259399, at *1. Compare ECF No. 1-1 at 1, Complaint⁷ and James, Complaint, at 1.⁸

II. JURISDICTION AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

The Trust filed its action in the Rhode Island Superior Court. The defendant ("Attorney General" or "State") removed it to this Court. (ECF No. 3, at 5.) Jurisdiction presumes a federal question arising under the laws of the United States. 28 U.S.C. § 1331. Declaratory relief pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2201(a) is available in the federal courts in cases of "actual controversy", which includes the need for ripeness, "a sine qua non of any assumption of federal jurisdiction." Verizon New England, Inc. v. Intern'l Broth. of Elec. Workers, 651 F.3d 176, 188 (1st Cir. 2011). Ripeness is generally a question of law. Ernst & Young v. Depositors Econ. Prot. Corp., 45 F.3d 530, 534 (1st Cir. 1995). Mandamus was sought in the Superior Court pursuant to R.I.G.L. 1956 § 8-2-16.

The Attorney General has moved to dismiss. (ECF No. 5.) In deciding a Motion to Dismiss, the Court's methodology and scope of review is familiar. The Court must assume the truth of all "well-pleaded facts and give the plaintiff the benefit of all reasonable inferences therefrom." Thomas v. Rhode Island, 542 F.3d 944, 948 (1st Cir. 2008). The plaintiff must demonstrate that its claim for relief is "plausible." Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007).

III. MOTION TO DISMISS

The State puts forth several arguments in support of its Motion to Dismiss. Two have found purchase in this Court, obviating the need to address anything else. First, the State protests that the Trust lacks Article III standing, and the Court agrees. Second, the State objects to mandamus because, inter alia, the Trust fails to show that what it seeks from the Attorney General is performance of a ministerial duty. The Court agrees with this proposition as well.

A. Standing

"[J]ust like suits for every other type of remedy, declaratory-judgment actions must satisfy Article Ill's case-or-controversy requirement." California v. Texas, 593 U.S. 659, 141 S. Ct. 2104, 2115, 210 L.Ed.2d 230 (2021). To demonstrate that it has standing, a plaintiff must allege (1) an injury in fact, (2) that is traceable to the defendant's conduct, and (3) is redressable by judicial decision. Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330, 338, 136 S.Ct. 1540, 194 L.Ed.2d 635 (2016). An organizational plaintiff may establish Article III standing in either of two ways: by showing (1) the organization, in its own right, has suffered an injury and meets general standing criteria ("organizational standing") or (2) the organization represents a member who would have standing on their own ("member standing"). Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard Coll., 600 U.S. 181, 198-99, 143 S. Ct. 2141, 216 L.Ed.2d 857 (2023).

The Trust's position on standing is, frankly, unclear. There is no claim of member standing here. A claim of member standing requires a showing that the organization has members and that one or more of those members have suffered injuries in fact. This Complaint was brought purely on behalf of the Trust, although it asserts that "Plaintiff and all women have standing." (ECF No. 1, ¶ 18.) The Complaint does not describe the Trust as being a member organization. (ECF No. 1, ¶ 9.) The Trust has not identified one single member, or individual, who has suffered an injury from the failure of ratification. Instead, it presents a series of statistics on violence against women which, while distressing and alarming, does not satisfy the requirement of injury in fact. (ECF No. 1, ¶ 22-28.) Equal Means Equal, 3 F.4th at 29 (no causal connection between statistics on violence against women and failure to recognize ERA validity).

Having failed to plead a case for member standing, the Trust's Reply Memorandum disavows organizational standing. "[T]he standing argument in [Equal Means Equal] was exclusively based on organizational standing, a theory not asserted here." (ECF No. 16, at 5) (emphasis supplied). The Trust's memorandum...