Commercial Litigation and Arbitration

Must Intervenors Who Inject New Claims into Case Have Standing Independent from the Original Plaintiff? Circuit Split

N.C. St. Conference, NAACP v. McRory, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 109626 (M.D.N.C. Aug. 8, 2014):

Finally, Intervenors contend that they are "not require[d]" to "have standing independent from the original [P]laintiffs." (Id. at 9.) While that may be true as to claims that other Plaintiffs actually assert, here, no other Plaintiff has challenged the elimination of pre-registration as to all young voters. The circuits appear to be split on whether the jurisdictional rule requiring a party to have standing to bring a claim can be dispensed with entirely for Intervenors injecting new claims into the litigation. Cf. Shaw v. Hunt, 154 F.3d 161 (4th Cir. 1998) (permissive Intervenors not required to have standing where they adopted plaintiffs' complaint and asserted no new claim); S.E.C. v. U.S. Realty & Improvement Co., 310 U.S. 434, 460 (1940) (intervenor had "a sufficient interest in the maintenance of its statutory authority and the performance of its public duties to entitle it through intervention to prevent [bankruptcy] reorganizations"); King v. Christie, 981 F. Supp. 2d 296, 307 (D.N.J. 2013) (noting circuit split on the question of whether an intervenor must have standing). Intervenors cite no Fourth Circuit case addressing the issue, nor has the court found one. Because Intervenors fail to allege any different harm should its position be correct, the court need not decide this issue at this stage; and, in light of the lack of Fourth Circuit precedent, the court declines to do so.

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