24-1900
Defending Education v. Croton-Harmon Union Free School District
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Second Circuit
August Term, 2024
No. 24-1900
DEFENDING EDUCATION,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
CROTON-HARMON UNION FREE SCHOOL DISTRICT, CROTON-HARMON
BOARD OF EDUCATION, STEPHEN WALKER, in his official capacity as Superintendent of Croton-Harmon Union Free School District, JOHN
GRIFFITHS, in his official capacity as Assistant Superintendent of Croton-Harmon Union Free School District, LAURA DUBAK, in her
official capacity as President of Croton-Harmon High School, MARK
MAXAM, in his official capacity as Acting Principal of CrotonHarmon High School, SARAH CARRIER, in her official capacity as President of Croton-Harmon Board of Education, NEAL HABER, in
his official capacity as Vice President of Croton-Harmon Board of Education, ANAMIKA BHATNAGAR, ANA TEAGUE, JOSHUA DIAMOND,
OMAR MAYYASI, and THEO OSHIRO, in their official capacities as
Board Trustees of Croton-Harmon Board of Education,
Defendants-Appellees. ∗
∗
The Clerk of Court is respectfully directed to amend the official caption as set forth above.
On Appeal from a Judgment of the United States District Court for
the Southern District of New York.
SUBMITTED: APRIL 22, 2025
DECIDED: APRIL 22, 2025
ON RECONSIDERATION: SEPTEMBER 15, 2026
Before: CALABRESI, PARKER, and NARDINI, Circuit Judges.
Defending Education is an association of parents, students, and concerned citizens that brought this action pursuant to
42 U.S.C. § 1983 challenging a set of student speech policies adopted by the Croton-Harmon Union Free School District in New York for alleged violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Defending Education represents three of its parentmembers whose children attend school in the Croton-Harmon School District and espouse social and political views that they wish to share but refrain from doing so because they fear their speech is prohibited by the District’s policies. In the district court, Defending Education moved for a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of those policies. The district court denied that motion and dismissed the action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under Aguayo v. Richardson, 473 F.2d 1090 (2d Cir. 1973), in which we held that associations lack standing to sue on behalf of their members for claims brought under § 1983. Defending Education appealed the district court’s decision to our Court but, acknowledging Aguayo, moved for summary affirmance, which we granted. Defending Education
promptly petitioned for reconsideration en banc, asking our Court to
2
overrule Aguayo and to remand the case to the district court so that Defending Education can pursue its lawsuit against the District.
After circulating this opinion to all active members of our Court and receiving no objection, we overrule Aguayo’s holding with respect to associational standing under § 1983. In its place, we adopt the rule outlined by the Supreme Court in Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Commission, 432 U.S. 333, 343 (1977), and adopted by our sister circuits, which provides: A membership organization has standing to bring suit on behalf of its members under § 1983 when (a) those members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right, (b) the interests protected are germane to that organization’s purpose, and (c) the participation of individual members in the lawsuit is not necessary for the claim asserted or the relief requested. Accordingly, we REVERSE the judgment of the district court and REMAND for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion.
J. Michael Connolly, James F. Hasson,
Daniel M. Vitagliano, Paul R. Draper,
Consovoy McCarthy PLLC, Arlington, VA;
Patrick Strawbridge, Consovoy McCarthy
PLLC, Boston, MA, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Steven C. Stern, Sokoloff Stern LLP, Carle
Place, NY, for Respondents-Appellees.
3
WILLIAM J. NARDINI, Circuit Judge:
Defending Education is an association of parents, students, and
concerned citizens that brought this action pursuant to
42 U.S.C. § 1983 challenging a set of student speech policies adopted
by the Croton-Harmon Union Free School District (“Croton-Harmon”
or the “District”) in New York for alleged violations of the First and
Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Defending Education
represents three of its parent-members whose children attend school
in the District and espouse social and political views that they wish to
share but do not because their speech is likely prohibited by CrotonHarmon’s speech policies. Defending Education moved for a
preliminary injunction against the enforcement of the District’s
challenged policies. The district court denied that motion and
dismissed the action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under
Aguayo v. Richardson, 473 F.2d 1090 (2d Cir. 1973), in which this Court
held that associations lack standing to sue on behalf of their members
4
for claims brought under § 1983. Defending Education appealed the
district court’s decision to our Court but, acknowledging Aguayo,
moved for summary affirmance, which we granted. Defending
Education now petitions for reconsideration en banc, asking us to
overrule Aguayo and to remand the case to the district court so that it
can pursue its lawsuit against Croton-Harmon.
After circulating this opinion to all active members of our Court
and receiving no objection, we overrule Aguayo’s holding with respect
to associational standing under § 1983. In its place, we adopt the rule
outlined by the Supreme Court in Hunt v. Washington State Apple
Advertising Commission, 432 U.S. 333, 343 (1977), and adopted by our
sister circuits, which provides: A membership organization has
standing to bring suit on behalf of its members under § 1983 when
(1) those members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own
right, (2) the interests protected are germane to that organization’s
purpose, and (3) the participation of individual members in the
5
lawsuit is not necessary for the claim asserted or the relief requested.
Accordingly, we REVERSE the judgment of the district court and
REMAND for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion.
I. Background
On June 12, 2024, Defending Education filed a complaint in the
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York,
alleging that a set of student speech policies adopted by the CrotonHarmon Union Free School District’s Board of Education infringed
upon the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of several of its
members’ children under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. This action was brought
on behalf of three anonymous parent-members of Defending
Education—identified in the Complaint as Parents A, B, and C—
“who live in the Croton-Harmon Union Free School District and
whose children are enrolled in Croton public schools.” Parents
Defending Educ. v. Croton-Harmon Union Free Sch. Dist., No. 7:24-CV04485, Docket No. 1 (“Complaint”) ¶ 13.
6
The core claim advanced in the Complaint is that the District’s
policies prohibiting discrimination, harassment, and bullying by
students both on and off school grounds “discriminates based on
viewpoint, requires a student to affirm another student’s gender
identity when inconsistent with that student’s sex, prohibits a
substantial amount of protected speech, and uses vague terms that an
average student cannot understand.” Id. ¶ 39. 1 Defending Education
asserts that such speech codes are unlawful content- and viewpointbased restrictions, which are impermissibly overbroad, and void for
1 Croton-Harmon’s disputed policies include those pertaining to: (1) sex and gender-identity discrimination and harassment, see Complaint, Exhs. 1 and 2, Policy 0110 (“Sex Discrimination and Sexual Harassment”) and Policy 0110-R (“Sexual Harassment Regulation”) (each last revised March 25, 2021); (2) bullying, discrimination, and harassment of students, see id., Exhs. 3, 4, and 5, Policy 0115 (“Dignity For All Students: Prohibiting Bullying, Discrimination and Harassment of Students”) (last revised May 5, 2022), Policy 0115-R (“Student Harassment and Bullying Prevention and Intervention Regulation”) (last revised May 5, 2022), and Policy 0115-E (“Croton-Harmon School District Bullying/Harassment Report Form”) (maintained as of May 9, 2019); (3) the student code of conduct, see id., Exh. 6, Policy 5300 (“Code of Conduct”) (last revised June 16, 2022); and (4) acceptable-use of computer and electronic communication devices, see id., Exhs. 7 and 8, Policy 4526 (“Access to Computer Network for Use in Instruction”) and Policy 4526-R (“Acceptable Use for Computer and Internet Access Regulation”) (each last revised June 15, 2017).
7
vagueness. Moreover, Defending Education alleges that its members’
children are “compelled to mouth support for views on sensitive
topics that they disagree with,” Complaint ¶ 148, and that these
children experience “a realistic danger” that their constitutionally
protected speech is being chilled by fear of running afoul of CrotonHarmon’s policies, id. ¶ 177 (quoting Members of City Council of L.A. v.
Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 801 (1984) (internal quotation
marks omitted)).
The day after filing this lawsuit, Defending Education moved
to preliminarily enjoin Croton-Harmon from enforcing its policies,
acknowledging that success on the merits of both its lawsuit and its
motion for preliminary injunction was, at that time, foreclosed by two
of our Court’s precedents. One of these precedents was Aguayo,
which as noted above categorically barred associational standing
under § 1983. The other precedent was Do No Harm v. Pfizer Inc., 96
F.4th 106 (2d Cir. 2024) (“Do No Harm I”), which held that an
8
association suing under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 (as well as certain other legal
provisions) must identify by name at least one injured member for
purposes of establishing Article III standing under a summary
judgment standard applicable to a motion for a preliminary
injunction. Id. at 118–19. Without such a showing, a reviewing court
could not “consider the merits of the preliminary injunction motion”
and was instructed to “dismiss the action in its entirety.” Id. at 120.
On July 12, 2024, relying on both Aguayo and Do No Harm I, the
district court entered an order denying Defending Education’s
motion for a preliminary injunction and dismissing the action sua
sponte without prejudice. Defending Education appealed that
decision to this Court, petitioning for an initial hearing en banc to
overturn both Aguayo and Do No Harm I, which we denied. Defending
Education then moved for summary affirmance, so that it could seek
reconsideration by our Court en banc, or else petition the Supreme
Court, to overturn Aguayo and Do No Harm I. While Defending
9
Education’s motion was pending, the panel in Do No Harm I vacated
and revised its decision, 2 leaving only “Aguayo [to] independently
bar[] [Defending Education’s] standing.” 2d Cir., No. 24-1900, App.
Doc. 33, at 1. We agreed that Aguayo barred Defending Education’s
standing to bring its lawsuit. Accordingly, on April 22, 2025, we
entered an order granting Defending Education’s motion for
summary affirmance.
On May 6, 2025, Defending Education promptly petitioned for
reconsideration en banc, arguing that Aguayo’s bar on associational
standing in § 1983 cases should be overruled. The Court has now
considered the parties’ supplemental briefing on this petition.
2
In the revised opinion, this Court remanded the question of standing to maintain the action past the pleading stage and left open the possibility that an association’s use of pseudonyms does not require dismissal, stressing that in “this Court’s decision in Building and Construction Trades Council of Buffalo, New York and Vicinity v. Downtown Development, Inc., 448 F.3d 138 (2d Cir. 2006) . . . we concluded that an organizational plaintiff need not identify specific injured members by name at the pleading stage.” Do No Harm v. Pfizer, Inc., 126 F.4th 109, 122 n.7 (2d Cir. 2025) (“Do No Harm II”).
10
II. Discussion
Defending Education’s appeal presents us with an occasion to
correct a governing rule in this Circuit—that an organization lacks
standing to sue under § 1983 for violations of the rights of its
members—which we adopted in Aguayo more than fifty years ago
and which, plainly put, has “outlived its usefulness.” Centro de la
Comunidad Hispana de Locust Valley v. Town of Oyster Bay, 868 F.3d 104,
122 (2d Cir. 2017) (Jacobs, J., dissenting). Although our Court has
relied on Aguayo in past cases, see, e.g., Nnebe v. Daus, 644 F.3d 147, 156
(2d Cir. 2011); League of Women Voters of Nassau Cnty. v. Nassau Cnty.
Bd. of Supervisors, 737 F.2d 155, 160–61 (2d Cir. 1984), developments in
the law lead us to conclude that Aguayo’s rule barring associational
standing in pursuit of a § 1983 claim is inconsistent with prevailing
Supreme Court decisions as well as the uniform holdings of our sister
circuits. See Fed. R. App. P. 40(b)(2)(B)–(C). Accordingly, it must be
overruled.
11
In reaching that conclusion, we acknowledge that a panel of our
Court is “bound by the decisions of prior panels until such time as
they are overruled either by an en banc panel of our Court or by the
Supreme Court . . . and thus that it would ordinarily be neither
appropriate nor possible for us to reverse an existing Circuit
precedent.” Shipping Corp. of India Ltd. v. Jaldhi Overseas Pte Ltd.,
585 F.3d 58, 67 (2d Cir. 2009) (internal quotation marks and citation
omitted). That is why, on initial consideration, this panel considered
itself bound by Aguayo and therefore affirmed the judgment of the
district court.
Our Court has long followed, however, the salutary practice of
allowing a panel to revisit the holding of a prior panel in
extraordinary circumstances such as these, where it has become
pellucid that our earlier precedent is erroneous. See United States v.
Smith, 949 F.3d 60, 65 (2d Cir. 2020) (collecting cases). We have
colloquially described this process as a “mini en banc,” Michel v.
12
I.N.S., 206 F.3d 253, 268 n.2 (2d Cir. 2000) (Cabranes, J., concurring),
and we invoke it only when the issue in question enjoys the fullest
consensus on our Court. To ensure the existence of such consensus,
a panel of our Court will circulate “its proposed opinion to the active
judges of the court, with copies to the senior judges, and, in the
absence of objection or call for an en banc poll, files the opinion” with
a notation to that effect. Jon O. Newman & Marin K. Levy, Written &
Unwritten: The Rules, Internal Procedures, and Customs of the United
States Courts of Appeals 112–13 (2024). We have proceeded in that
manner here and have received no objection.
A. Reexamining Aguayo
When we decided Aguayo in 1973, we were among the earliest
federal courts to consider the ability of associations to sue on behalf
of their members under § 1983—and the first court of appeals to hold
that membership associations lacked standing to do so.
13
In the more than fifty years that followed, not one of our sister
circuits has reached the same conclusion. We now stand alone as the
sole federal circuit that bars associations from suing on behalf of their
members for § 1983 claims. See, e.g., Bos. Parent Coal. for Acad.
Excellence Corp. v. Sch. Comm. for City of Boston, 89 F.4th 46, 55–56 (1st
Cir. 2023) (applying Hunt, 432 U.S. at 343, in finding organization’s
associational standing to bring a § 1983 claim); Contractors Ass’n of E.
Pa., Inc. v. City of Philadelphia, 945 F.2d 1260, 1264 (3d Cir. 1991) (same);
N.C. State Conf. of the NAACP v. Raymond, 981 F.3d 295, 301 (4th Cir.
2020) (same); Speech First, Inc. v. Fenves, 979 F.3d 319, 330 (5th Cir.
2020) (same); Speech First, Inc. v. Schlissel, 939 F.3d 756, 763–65 (6th Cir.
2019) (same); Milwaukee Police Ass’n v. Flynn, 863 F.3d 636, 639–40 (7th
Cir. 2017) (same); Pharm. Rsch. & Mfrs. of Am. v. Williams, 64 F.4th 932,
946–48 (8th Cir. 2023) (same); Columbia Basin Apartment Ass’n v. City
of Pasco, 268 F.3d 791, 798–99 (9th Cir. 2001) (same); Roe No. 2 v. Ogden,
253 F.3d 1225, 1230 (10th Cir. 2001) (same); Greater Birmingham
14
Ministries v. Sec’y of State for State of Ala., 992 F.3d 1299, 1316–17 (11th
Cir. 2021) (same); Metro. Wash. Chapter, Assoc. Builders & Contractors,
Inc. v. District of Columbia, 62 F.4th 567, 572–73 (D.C. Cir. 2023) (same).
In step with the holdings of our sister circuits, the Supreme
Court has regularly decided cases brought by associations asserting
the rights of their members under § 1983, including, as relevant here,
parents suing school districts on behalf of their children. See, e.g.,
Parents Involved in Cmty. Schs. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701,
718–19 (2007). Because Aguayo places our Circuit’s rule of
associational standing in direct conflict with current Supreme Court
decisions, 3 as well as every other circuit that has opined on the issue,
the time is ripe for its reexamination.
3 For instance, Aguayo’s bar on associational standing in § 1983 cases is hard to square with the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, where the Court expressly affirmed the petitioning association’s standing to assert claims against the University of North Carolina under Hunt’s test for associational standing. 600 U.S. 181, 198–201 (2023). The plaintiff association in that case brought claims under both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (through § 1983), and the Supreme Court did not appear to
15
Since Aguayo was decided, it has become increasingly clear that
its special treatment of § 1983 lacks a doctrinal basis. In Aguayo, we
reasoned that § 1983 “confers a cause of action on any citizen of the
United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof who has
been deprived under color of state law of any rights, privileges, or
immunities secured by the Constitution and laws,” and that “[n]either
this language nor the history” of § 1983 suggested that “an
organization may sue . . . for the violation of rights of members.” 473
F.2d at 1099 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). We did
not point to anything in the text or history of § 1983’s originating
statute—the Civil Rights Act of 1871—that expressly bars
associational organizations from vindicating the “rights, privileges,
or immunities” of their members who are “citizen[s] of the United
States or other person[s] within the jurisdiction thereof.”
42 U.S.C. § 1983. Instead, we based our holding primarily on Hague
distinguish between those claims in its discussion of associational standing. 600 U.S. at 198–201.
16
v. Committee for Industrial Organization, 307 U.S. 496 (1939), in which
the Supreme Court dismissed organizational plaintiffs (while
affirming a holding in favor of individual plaintiffs) on the basis that
the Constitution’s Privileges and Immunities Clause, id. at 514
(opinion of Roberts, J., joined by Black, J.), and the liberty guarantee
of the Due Process Clause, id. at 527 (opinion of Stone, J., joined by
Reed, J.), apply only to “natural, not artificial, persons,” id. Although
the suggestion from Hague was that associational organizations could
not sue on their own behalf when they lack the rights they would seek
to vindicate, 4 “[Hague] says nothing about whether [such
organizations] can stand in the place of their members.” Centro de la
Comunidad Hispana, 868 F.3d at 122 (Jacobs, J., dissenting).
Tellingly, Aguayo’s reliance on Hague to deduce a restrictive
rule on associational standing is out of step with the Supreme Court’s
4 This suggestion has arguably been tempered by recent Supreme Court decisions that assume a more expansive view of the rights of artificial persons. See, e.g., Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, 573 U.S. 682, 708 (2014) (“The term ‘person’ sometimes encompasses artificial persons (as the Dictionary Act instructs) . . . .”).
17
embrace of associational standing. For instance, in Warth v. Seldin, the
Supreme Court rejected any categorical bar on associational standing
for § 1983 claims and confirmed (at least, in dicta) that “[e]ven in the
absence of injury to itself, an association may have standing solely as
the representative of its members.” 422 U.S. 490, 511 (1975). Warth
followed a Second Circuit decision in which we concluded that an
associational plaintiff lacked standing because it was “highly
doubtful that an organization has standing to represent its members
in most cases under [§ 1983].” Warth v. Seldin, 495 F.2d 1187, 1194 (2d
Cir. 1974). Although the Supreme Court ultimately affirmed our
Court’s judgment because the organizational plaintiff did not
adequately plead “any basis from which to infer that the controversy
between respondents and [the organizational plaintiffs’ members] . . .
remained a live, concrete dispute when th[e] complaint was filed,”
Warth, 422 U.S. at 517, it expressly diverged from our Court’s view
on associational standing, stating that so long as an association
18
“allege[s] that its members, or any one of them, are suffering
immediate or threatened injury as a result of the challenged action of
the sort that would make out a justiciable case had the members
themselves brought suit . . . . and so long as the nature of the claim
and of the relief sought does not make the individual participation of
each injured party indispensable to proper resolution of the cause, the
association may be an appropriate representative of its members,
entitled to invoke the court’s jurisdiction.” Id. at 511.
In Hunt, the Supreme Court relied on Warth to formulate its
general three-part test for associational standing under Article III:
“that an association has standing to bring suit on behalf of its
members when: (a) its members would otherwise have standing to
sue in their own right; (b) the interests it seeks to protect are germane
to the organization’s purpose; and (c) neither the claim asserted nor
the relief requested requires the participation of individual members
in the lawsuit.” 432 U.S. at 343.
19
As Hunt illustrates, to the extent that our decision in Aguayo
held that federal courts lack subject matter jurisdiction under Article
III when an association sues on behalf of its members, we were simply
wrong. We would be directly contradicting the Supreme Court if we
continued to say that there is no such thing as associational
“standing,” as a jurisdictional matter, when it comes to § 1983 claims.
In the wake of these decisions by the Supreme Court and other
circuits, we have nevertheless considered ourselves bound by Aguayo.
At times, we have tried to rationalize its holding by shifting away
from the vocabulary of standing, and we have instead said that § 1983
does not permit associational plaintiffs to sue in a representative
capacity because “the rights it secures” are “personal.” League of
Women Voters of Nassau Cnty., 737 F.2d at 160. Yet, in truth, § 1983
does not itself secure any specific rights; it merely “provides a federal
cause of action” to vindicate rights that are created by other
provisions of federal law. Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 387 (2007).
20
That many federal rights are indeed “personal,” see, e.g., Malloy v.
Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 10 (1964), does not rule out associational
standing—which, after all, still requires that an associational plaintiff
allege that its members have “such a personal stake in the outcome of
the controversy as to warrant [their] invocation of federal-court
jurisdiction,” Summers v. Earth Island Inst., 555 U.S. 488, 493 (2009)
(internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
Indeed, without ever expressly considering the impact of Warth
or Hunt on the viability of Aguayo’s associational standing rule, we
have continued to rely on an “implicit determination of prior panels
that the [Aguayo] rule survives Warth until such time as our prior
decisions are overruled either by an en banc panel of our Court or by
the Supreme Court.” Nnebe, 644 F.3d at 156 n.5 (alteration adopted,
citation and internal quotation marks omitted). In the meantime, as
judges of this Court have noted, in our effort to harmonize Aguayo
with the Supreme Court’s approach to associational standing, we
21
have indulged “increasingly tenuous and pretextual claims of injury
to organizations themselves” under diversion-of-resources theories,
Centro de la Comunidad Hispana, 868 F.3d at 123–24 (Jacobs, J.,
dissenting), like the one that the Supreme Court recently rejected as
an adequate basis for associational standing, see FDA v. All. for
Hippocratic Med., 602 U.S. 367, 394–95 (2024) (rejecting medical
associations’ argument that “standing exists when an organization
diverts its resources in response to a defendant’s actions”; holding
that “an organization that has not suffered a concrete injury caused
by a defendant’s action cannot spend its way into standing simply by
expending money to gather information and advocate against the
defendant’s action”).
We will no longer cling to Aguayo’s increasingly unpersuasive
and anachronistic bar on associational standing in § 1983 cases.
Instead, we harmonize our reading of the law to accord with the
Supreme Court and a national consensus of our sister circuits. To that
22
end, we overrule Aguayo’s holding that our Court lacks jurisdiction
over a § 1983 claim brought by an organizational plaintiff asserting
associational standing on behalf of its members. See 473 F.2d at 1099–
1100. As for subsequent cases in which we relied on Aguayo to hold
that an organizational plaintiff had no standing to sue under § 1983
solely as the representative of its members, their holdings, too, are
overruled. See, e.g., Knife Rights, Inc. v. Vance, 802 F.3d 377, 388 & n.9
(2d Cir. 2015); League of Women Voters of Nassau Cnty., 737 F.2d at 160–
61; Lecci v. Cahn, 493 F.2d 826, 828 (2d Cir. 1974).
We now follow the Supreme Court, and our sister circuits, in
holding that when an organizational plaintiff, like Defending
Education, submits a claim under § 1983, “the standing requirements
of Article III can be satisfied in two ways[:]” first, “the organization
can claim that it suffered an injury in its own right,” or, second, “it
can assert ‘standing solely as the representative of its members.’”
Students for Fair Admissions, 600 U.S. at 199 (quoting Warth, 422 U.S. at
23
511); see also supra, at 14–15 (collecting cases). This Court will not
distinguish between an organizational plaintiff’s ability to establish
representational standing in pursuit of a § 1983 claim as compared to
other contexts in which we have applied Hunt’s standard to
determine whether organizational plaintiffs had standing to sue.
See, e.g., Do No Harm II, 126 F.4th at 117–18 (medical association
pursuing claims of race discrimination against private fellowship
program); All. for Open Soc’y Int’l v. U.S. Agency for Int’l Dev., 651 F.3d
218, 228 (2d Cir. 2011) (non-governmental organizations pursuing
claims of compelled speech as a condition for receipt of government
funds); Bldg. & Constr. Trades Council of Buffalo, N.Y. & Vicinity v.
Downtown Dev., Inc., 448 F.3d 138, 144 (2d Cir. 2006) (trade association
pursuing claims regarding hazardous waste disposal). Thus, to
review claims in which organizational plaintiffs assert claims in their
representative capacity in this Circuit under § 1983, courts must apply
24
the Supreme Court’s touchstone standard set forth in Hunt, 432 U.S.
at 343.
B. Applying Hunt
In this case, Defending Education alleges that its members—
Parents A, B, and C—live in the Croton-Harmon Union Free School
District and that their children attend the District’s public schools.
Defending Education further submits that “[t]hese members and their
children are suffering concrete injuries as a direct result of the
District’s unconstitutional policies” and that “they credibly fear that
the expression of their deeply held views is prohibited” in violation
of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Complaint ¶ 84. Because,
in this decision, we amend this Circuit’s applicable standard for
determining associational standing in § 1983 cases, the question of
Defending Education’s standing under Hunt should be examined by
the district court in the first instance. Accordingly, on remand, the
district court must address the disputed issue of Defending
Education’s Article III standing and should conduct any further fact25
finding that it determines to be required. We express no view on the
question of whether, if Defending Education establishes standing in
the district court, it has adequately met the standard for seeking a
preliminary injunction against the enforcement of Croton-Harmon’s
challenged policies. See N.Y. Progress & Prot. PAC v. Walsh, 733 F.3d
483, 486–88 (2d Cir. 2013) (applying preliminary injunction standard
in the context of alleged First Amendment violation).
III. Conclusion
In sum, we hold as follows:
1. We overrule the holding in Aguayo v. Richardson, 473
F.2d 1090, 1099 (2d Cir. 1973), that an organization may not “sue
under [42 U.S.C. § 1983] for the violation of rights of members.” An
organization pursuing a § 1983 claim may satisfy its Article III
standing requirements in two ways. The organization can show that
it has suffered an injury itself or, alternatively, it can establish its
26
“standing solely as the representative of its members.” Warth v.
Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 511 (1975).
2. To invoke associational standing as the representative of
its members, an organization must demonstrate that “(a) its members
would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right; (b) the
interests it seeks to protect are germane to the organization’s purpose;
and (c) neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the
participation of individual members in the lawsuit.” Hunt v. Wash.
State Apple Advert. Comm’n, 432 U.S. 333, 343 (1977).
3. Aside from our overruling Aguayo’s rule barring
organizations from suing under § 1983 on behalf of their members,
Aguayo’s separate holdings remain binding in this Circuit.
For the foregoing reasons, we REVERSE the district court’s
judgment of dismissal and REMAND for further proceedings in
accordance with this opinion.
27