Allen v. Wright

Facts

Parents of black public school children brought this suit. When they filed it, their children attended public schools in seven States, in school districts undergoing desegregation. The IRS denies tax-exempt status to racially discriminatory private schools. Tax-exempt status also lets donors deduct contributions to the school from their income taxes. To carry out this policy, the IRS requires a school to adopt a nondiscrimination policy, make it public, and certify each year that it complies. The parents alleged that these guidelines and procedures are too weak. In their view, some tax-exempt private schools that were created or expanded as nearby public schools desegregated in fact discriminate by race. The parents did not claim that their children were excluded from any of those private schools. They never alleged that their children had applied or would apply to a private school. They claimed two harms: a direct injury from the Government's aid to discriminatory schools, and harm to their children's chance to attend desegregated public schools, because deductible contributions help raise funds to organize and expand schools that white students attend to avoid desegregating public schools. They sought only prospective relief: a declaratory judgment, an injunction requiring the IRS to deny exemptions to a broader class of private schools, and an order replacing the IRS guidelines.

Issues

1. Do parents of black public school children have standing to sue over the IRS's tax exemptions for racially discriminatory private schools on the basis of a claimed direct injury or stigma from the Government's aid to those schools?
2. Is the injury to their children's ability to receive a desegregated public school education fairly traceable to the IRS's grants of tax exemptions to racially discriminatory private schools?

Holding

The parents lacked standing. Their claimed right to lawful government conduct and their abstract stigmatic injury were not judicially cognizable. Their children's diminished chance at a desegregated education was not fairly traceable to the IRS's grants of tax exemptions to discriminatory private schools.