Ralph A. Emmanuelli v. Reince Priebus ( 2012 )

Case: 12-12180 Date Filed: 12/11/2012 Page: 1 of 6
[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
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No. 12-12180
Non-Argument Calendar
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D.C. Docket No. 8:12-cv-00199-SCB-AEP
RALPH A. EMMANUELLI,
HILLSBOROUGH HISPANIC COALITION, INC.,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
versus
REINCE PRIEBUS,
in his official capacity as chair of the
Republican National Committee,
Defendant-Appellee.
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Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Florida
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(December 11, 2012)
Before BARKETT, PRYOR and BLACK, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
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Ralph Emmanuelli and the Hillsborough Hispanic Coalition, Inc.
(Appellants) appeal the district court’s dismissal of their lawsuit alleging
constitutional and statutory violations for failure to state a claim under Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6).1 After review, we affirm.
I.
Appellant Ralph Emmanuelli is a Florida resident and registered Republican
voter in Pinellas County, Florida. The Hillsborough Hispanic Coalition, Inc. is a
non-profit corporation with the stated purpose of promoting, protecting, and
defending the rights of the Hispanic community. Appellee Reince Priebus is the
Chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC).
Like many organizations, the RNC requires its members to abide by certain
rules. Two such rules are at issue in this case. The first rule, the calendar program,
prohibits member states from holding a presidential primary or caucus before a
specified date. The second rule, the delegate-reduction penalty, reduces the
convention delegates of nonconforming states by a predetermined amount when
they violate the RNC’s calendar program. In this case, Florida and its Republican
Party violated the RNC’s calendar program when they held, and accepted the
1
This Court reviews de novo a district court’s dismissal for failure to state a claim under
Rule 12(b)(6). Speaker v. U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Servs. Ctrs. for Disease Control &
Prevention, 623 F.3d 1371, 1379 (11th Cir. 2010).
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results of, the State’s presidential primary prior to the RNC’s specified date.
Consequently, the RNC enforced its delegate-reduction penalty against Florida.
In response, Appellants brought this action for declaratory and injunctive
relief on the ground that the RNC’s delegate-reduction penalty violates the Equal
Protection Clause of the Constitution, as well as 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and Section
Two of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1973.2 Appellants allege that the
RNC’s rules “underenfranchise[]” Hispanic Republican voters, because they allow
early voting states—namely, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada—
with comparatively small percentages of Republican Hispanic voters to skew the
debate toward the interests of those states’ dominant demographics. As a result of
the influence the RNC’s rules bestow on those states, Appellants contend that
presidential candidates adopt positions contrary to those of Hispanic voters.
Priebus moved to dismiss under, inter alia, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
12(b)(6), arguing that Appellants failed to state a claim for which relief could be
granted. The district court granted Priebus’s motion, dismissing Appellants’
complaint with prejudice and entering judgment in favor of Priebus. Appellants
filed a timely notice of appeal.
2
In their complaint to the district court, Appellants asserted a due process violation under
the Fourteenth Amendment. But, as in the district court, Appellants have presented no legal
argument or factual recital in their briefs to support such a violation. We therefore do not
consider it. See, e.g., Access Now, Inc. v. Sw. Airlines Co., 385 F.3d 1324, 1330 (11th Cir. 2004)
(“[A] legal claim or argument that has not been briefed before the court is deemed abandoned
and its merits will not be addressed.”).
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II.
The sole issue on appeal is whether the district court erred in concluding the
RNC was not a state actor for purposes of Appellants’ statutory and constitutional
claims. 3 Appellants rightly concede that state action is a requisite element of their
case, and they point to two of this Court’s state action tests in attempting to show
RNC is a state actor.
First, Appellants invoke the public function test, which finds state action
when private actors perform traditional state functions. See, e.g., Focus on the
Family v. Pinellas Suncoast Transit Auth., 344 F.3d 1263, 1277 (11th Cir. 2003).
Appellants argue that the RNC performed a traditional state function in reducing
Florida’s delegates to the 2012 convention. This argument, however, has no basis
in law or fact. As the Supreme Court has acknowledged, “controversies regarding
the seating of delegates” have traditionally been determined not by the states, but
by “the national political parties themselves.” O’Brien v. Brown, 409 U.S. 1, 5
(1972). Because the RNC’s enforcement of its delegate-reduction penalty was not
3
As a threshold matter, we reject Appellee’s mootness contention. As the Supreme Court
has routinely held in “the context of election cases,” the issues presented here fall within the
“capable of repetition yet evading review” exception to mootness. See, e.g., FEC v. Wis. Right
To Life, Inc., 551 U.S. 449, 463–64 (2007); First Nat’l Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765,
774 (1978); Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 737, n.8 (1974); see also ACLU v. The Fla. Bar, 999
F.2d 1486, 1496 (11th Cir. 1993). Additionally, because the appeal is narrowly limited to the
state action question, nothing in this opinion bears on Appellants’ “underenfranchise[ment]”
equal protection theory.
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a traditional state function, Appellants’ reliance on the public function test is
misplaced.
Next, Appellants rely on the nexus/joint action test, which finds state action
when private and state actors have an interdependent, symbiotic relationship
regarding “the specific conduct of which the plaintiff complains.” Focus on the
Family, 344 F.3d at 1278. Appellants assert Florida and the RNC operated jointly
in enforcing the delegate-reduction penalty because the State (1) authorized and
conducted the primary, and (2) adopted the results for the general election.
This argument, like Appellants’ first, is meritless as they have not
established the RNC and Florida were engaged in a relevant “symbiotic”
relationship. Appellants have shown the State was involved in violating the RNC’s
calendar program by conducting a premature primary. But that is not the “specific
conduct of which the plaintiff complains.” Rather, Appellants challenge the
legality of the RNC’s penalty rule, which is triggered by the nonconforming
primary but which does not involve the State’s participation. There is no evidence
Florida and the RNC have a “symbiotic” relationship regarding the delegate-
reduction penalty. Thus, Appellants have not made out the requirements of the
nexus/joint action test for state action.
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III.
In sum, because Appellants have not shown RNC is a state actor, the district
court did not err in dismissing their complaint for failure to state a cause of action.
Therefore, we affirm the district court’s grant of Preibus’s Rule 12(b)(6) motion to
dismiss for failure to state a claim.
AFFIRMED.
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