Concrete enough for standing

Originally published by David Coale.

Plaintiff challenged a proposed development plan as violating the Fair Housing Act. Defendants argued “that because the planned redevelopment is both inchoate and designed to be mixed income and to attract a variety of tenants, [Plaintiff] can only speculate as to whether, if redevelopment proceeds, it will deprive her of the social and economic benefits of diversity,” and thus lacked standing.  The Fifth Circuit disagreed, finding that her “asserted injury would be concretely felt in the logical course of probably events flowing from an unfavorable decision by this court: (1) HUD approves the already-pending plan for redevelopment; (2) redevelopment occurs according to the approved plan; [and] (3) segregation and minority- and poverty-concentration occur in [Plaintiff’s] neighborhood as specifically anticipated in several expert reports contained in the record.”  The Court distinguished Clapper v. Amnesty International, 133 S. Ct. 1138 (2013), a recent case about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as “depend[ing] on a long and tenuous chain of contingent events[.]  McCardell v. U.S. Dep’t of Housing & Urban Devel., No. 14-40955 (July 23, 2015).

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