South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP v. South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice
Split Score
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Case Summary
Disposition
Affirmed
Advocacy groups challenged allegedly unconstitutional conditions in South Carolina juvenile-justice facilities. The Fourth Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, held the organizations themselves lacked Article III standing and affirmed dismissal of the suit without prejudice.
Circuit Split Identified
Legal Issue
Whether state Protection-and-Advocacy (P&A) organizations created under the PAIMI Act possess associational standing to sue on behalf of their statutory constituents despite lacking traditional members.
Circuit Positions
P&A systems do NOT have associational standing absent traditional indicia of membership; Hunt not satisfied.
P&A systems DO have associational standing under a functional application of Hunt’s indicia-of-membership test.
Conflict Summary
The Fifth, Eighth, and now Fourth Circuits hold that P&A systems do not satisfy Hunt’s ‘indicia of membership’ test and therefore lack associational standing, whereas the Ninth and Eleventh Circuits conclude that P&A systems functionally satisfy Hunt and may sue on behalf of their constituents.