Cato v. United States

Section 1915(d) permitted a district court to dismiss an in forma pauperis action on its own initiative if the action was frivolous or malicious. A complaint is frivolous when it lacks an arguable basis in law or fact; the statute therefore authorized review before the complaint proceeded to service.

Ordinarily, a pro se plaintiff must receive notice of pleading defects and an opportunity to amend. But leave to amend is unnecessary when the defects cannot possibly be cured. On appeal, represented counsel identified possible amendments, and the court considered both those proposals and other possible legal theories before concluding that none could establish jurisdiction or a cognizable claim.

The court also noted that the plaintiffs had previously filed substantially identical in forma pauperis complaints that had been dismissed. Repetitive litigation independently supported dismissal under § 1915(d).

The United States may be sued only to the extent that it has unequivocally consented to suit, and the plaintiff bears the burden of identifying that waiver. The terms of a waiver define the federal court's jurisdiction.

The FTCA was the most plausible potential source of waiver, but it grants jurisdiction over money-damages claims against the United States only if they accrued on or after January 1, 1945. Claims based on slavery, the kidnapping of ancestors, and other pre-1945 events therefore fell outside the statute's waiver.

The FTCA also requires that a tort claim be presented within two years after accrual. The asserted historical injuries were not timely presented under that requirement. Thus, the court treated the absence of a qualifying FTCA waiver, rather than an ordinary limitations defense, as dispositive.

The plaintiffs analogized their case to centuries-old Indian land claims, arguing that the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition of slavery should similarly permit suit despite time limits. But the Indian cases rested on the federal government's distinct trustee relationship with Indian tribes, a relationship created by treaties and specific statutes imposing fiduciary duties. No legally comparable relationship existed between the United States and descendants of enslaved persons.

The Thirteenth Amendment and later Civil War amendments did not themselves impose the particular trust obligations that supported the Indian cases. Consequently, those precedents did not relieve a private plaintiff of the obligation to identify and satisfy an unequivocal waiver of sovereign immunity.

Although the Ninth Circuit recognized that the continuing-violations doctrine can apply to constitutional as well as statutory claims, the doctrine cannot itself create jurisdiction. It could not overcome sovereign immunity unless the plaintiffs first established a basis to sue the United States for the particular challenged acts.

The plaintiffs alleged broad racial disparities and identified congressional inaction, including the failure to enact proposed legislation addressing capital sentencing and affirmative action. But they did not allege a discrete injury to themselves caused by a specific official's conduct or a specific government program.

Article III standing requires a personal, concrete injury that is fairly traceable to the defendant's unlawful conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief. A plaintiff may not sue simply because the government allegedly violates the law, nor litigate a generalized stigmatic injury shared by all African Americans.

Even apart from standing, the FTCA excludes claims based on the performance or nonperformance of discretionary governmental functions. Legislative judgments are discretionary, and allowing tort claims based on such judgments would invite judicial second-guessing of political, social, and economic policy decisions. Members of Congress also possess absolute immunity for legislative acts.

The plaintiffs argued that the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition of slavery and its enforcement clause necessarily permitted a direct action against the federal government. The court held that, whatever the Amendment's self-executing force, it did not authorize a damages suit against the United States absent an unequivocal waiver of sovereign immunity.

Under FDIC v. Meyer, Bivens does not extend from suits against individual federal officers to suits against federal agencies. A fortiori, a Bivens-type action cannot be maintained against the United States itself.

The FTCA likewise does not make the United States liable for constitutional torts. The plaintiffs' reliance on Indian trust cases such as United States v. Mitchell failed because those cases involved statutory mandates and claims within the Tucker Act; they did not establish either a comparable substantive right or a waiver applicable here.

The APA, 5 U.S.C. § 702, generally prevents dismissal of a suit seeking relief other than money damages merely because it is against the United States. Thus, sovereign immunity did not by itself bar the requests for an acknowledgment of discrimination and an apology.

Those requests nevertheless rested on the same generalized stigmatic injury from discrimination as the damages claims. Because the plaintiffs did not allege a concrete, personal injury fairly traceable to specific federal conduct, they lacked standing. The court concluded that requests for a national acknowledgment or apology should be directed to the representative branches, particularly Congress, rather than resolved by a federal court.