Case Title: Committee to Elect Dan Forest v. Employees Political Action Committee

Citation: 

Docket Number: 231A18

State: north-carolina

Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

Date: 2021-02-05T00:00:00Z

Document:
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF NORTH CAROLINA 
2021-NCSC-6 
No. 231A18 
Filed 5 February 2021 
THE COMMITTEE TO ELECT DAN FOREST, A POLITICAL COMMITTEE 
 
 
 
v. 
EMPLOYEES POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (EMPAC), A POLITICAL 
COMMITTEE  
  
 
Appeal pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 7A-30(2) from the decision of a divided panel of 
the Court of Appeals, 260 N.C. App. 1 (2018), reversing an order of summary 
judgment entered on 15 February 2017 by Judge Allen Baddour in Superior Court, 
Wake County.  On 5 December 2018, the Supreme Court allowed defendant’s petition 
for discretionary review as to additional issues.  Heard in the Supreme Court on 4 
November 2019.   
Walker Law Firm, PLLC, by David Steven Walker, II, for plaintiff.  
 
Stevens Martin Vaughn & Tadych, by C. Amanda Martin and Michael J. 
Tadych, for defendant. 
 
 
HUDSON, Justice. 
 
¶ 1 
 
At issue here is a question of first impression for our Court: whether the North 
Carolina Constitution limits the jurisdiction of our courts in the same manner as the 
standing requirements Article III imposes on federal courts, including the 
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requirement that the complaining party must show she has suffered “injury in fact,” 
even where an Act of the North Carolina General Assembly expressly confers 
standing to sue on a party, as it did in N.C.G.S. § 163-278.39A(f) (2011) (now 
repealed).  We hold that it does not, and we affirm the decision of the Court of 
Appeals.1  
I. 
Factual Background and Procedural History 
¶ 2 
 
In 2012, Linda Coleman and Dan Forest were, respectively, the Democratic 
and Republican candidates for Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina in the general 
election. The Employees Political Action Committee (“EMPAC” or “defendant”), a 
political action committee for the State Employees Association of North Carolina 
(SEANC), ran television advertisements supporting Ms. Coleman. According to 
plaintiff’s complaint, the original version of the advertisement placed by EMPAC 
included a photograph of an individual that was approximately one-eighth the height 
of the full advertisement and, at any rate, was not a full-screen picture as then 
required by law. Furthermore, the individual in the picture, Dana Cope, was neither 
the Chief Executive Officer nor the treasurer of EMPAC as required by then-existing 
law. 
 
1 We also hold that discretionary review was improvidently allowed as to the 
additional issue. 
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¶ 3 
 
After discovering the ad, the Committee to Elect Dan Forest (hereinafter, 
“plaintiff” or “the Committee”) sent a notice and letter to the North Carolina State 
Board of Elections and EMPAC regarding the size of the picture. The notice did not 
mention that the wrong individual was pictured. EMPAC subsequently removed the 
advertisement and replaced it with one including a full-screen picture. The full-screen 
picture in the second advertisement was also of Mr. Cope, and therefore also failed to 
comply fully with disclosure requirements.  
¶ 4 
 
Mr. Forest ultimately won the 2012 election for Lieutenant Governor. 
Thereafter, on 9 March 2016, his Committee filed a complaint in the Superior Court 
of Wake County against EMPAC, alleging violations of N.C.G.S. § 163-278.39A.  
¶ 5 
 
In 1999, the North Carolina General Assembly enacted N.C. Session Law 1999-
453, codified at N.C.G.S. § 163-278.38Z et seq. (2011) (hereinafter, “Disclosure 
Statute”), as a “Stand By Your Ad” law.2 The Disclosure Statute provided specific 
requirements for television and radio ads placed by candidate campaign committees, 
political action committees, and others supporting or opposing candidates. See 
generally N.C.G.S. § 163-278.39A. In pertinent part, the Disclosure Statute provided 
that television ads by political action committees “shall include a disclosure 
statement spoken by the chief executive officer or treasurer of the political action 
 
2 N.C.G.S. § 163-278.39A was repealed by the General Assembly effective 1 January 
2014. Session Law 2013-381, § 44.1.  
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committee and containing at least the following words: ‘The [name of political action 
committee] political action committee sponsored this ad opposing/supporting [name 
of candidate] for [name of office].’ ” Id. § 163-278.39A(b)(3). Furthermore, the 
Disclosure Statute required that, for all ads on television falling under the statute, 
“an unobscured, full-screen picture containing the disclosing individual, either in 
photographic form or through the actual appearance of the disclosing individual on 
camera, shall be featured throughout the duration of the disclosure statement.” Id. 
§ 163-278.39A(b)(6).  
¶ 6 
 
The Disclosure Statute also included a notable enforcement mechanism. In a 
section entitled “Legal Remedy,” it created a private cause of action as follows: 
[A] candidate for an elective office who complied with the 
television and radio disclosure requirements throughout 
that candidate’s entire campaign shall have a monetary 
remedy in a civil action against (i) an opposing candidate 
or candidate committee whose television or radio 
advertisement violates these disclosure requirements and 
(ii) against any political party organization, political action 
committee, 
individual, 
or 
other 
sponsor 
whose 
advertisements for that elective office violates these 
disclosure requirements[.]3 
 
3 A subsection of this section provided that, as a condition precedent to bringing suit 
under the statute, the complaining party must file a notice with the State Board of Elections 
or a county board of elections (for statewide and nonstatewide candidates, respectively) “after 
the airing of the advertisement but no later than the first Friday after the Tuesday on which 
the election occurred.” N.C.G.S. § 163-278.39A(f)(1). The other subsections provided a 
formula for calculating damages, including treble damages in certain circumstances, and 
shifted attorneys’ fees to a party found to be in violation of the statute. Id. §§ 163-
278.39A(f)(2), (3). 
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Id. § 163-278.39A(f). The North Carolina Court of Appeals has previously 
characterized the cause of action created by the General Assembly in the Disclosure 
Statute as “unique in the world of election law.” Friends of Joe Sam Queen v. Ralph 
Hise for N.C. Senate, 223 N.C. App. 395, 403 n.7 (2012). 
¶ 7 
 
Plaintiff’s complaint alleged two violations of the Disclosure Statute by 
EMPAC: (1) from 8 October through 25 October 2012, EMPAC ran a television ad 
that did not include “a full-screened picture containing the disclosing individual” but 
a much smaller one; and (2) Mr. Cope, the individual pictured in both versions of the 
ad, was not in fact “the Chief Executive Officer or treasurer of EMPAC.”4 The 
complaint included as attachments an affidavit from Mr. Forest attesting the 
Committee was bringing the complaint on his behalf, records of the proposed schedule 
for ad run times with Time Warner Cable, the invoices for the ads, and copies of the 
notice and letter sent to the State Board of Elections and EMPAC. Defendant filed an 
answer and motion to dismiss based on lack of standing, which was denied. After 
failing to answer discovery, plaintiff voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit on 30 June 
2015 and refiled on 9 March 2016. 
 
4 In order to preserve a claim under the Disclosure Statute, the Committee was 
required to file a Notice of Complaint with the State Board of Elections within a certain time 
period after the election. N.C.G.S. § 163-278.39A(f)(1) (2011). While the Forest Committee 
presented evidence that it had filed such a notice in a timely manner, the notice contained 
only the allegation of the incorrectly-sized picture, not the allegation relating to the identity 
of the disclosing individual. As a result, the Committee has not preserved the claim that this 
aspect of the Disclosure Statute was violated. 
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¶ 8 
 
After discovery in the case proceeded, defendant filed a motion for summary 
judgment on 29 June 2016, arguing the Disclosure Statute violated the First 
Amendment as a content-based restriction on speech. After hearing the motion on 16 
August 2016, the trial court entered an order on 15 February 2017 granting 
defendant’s motion for summary judgment, stating that “plaintiff ha[d] failed to 
allege any forecast of damage other than speculative damage” and that “[i]n the 
absence of any forecast of actual demonstrable damages, the statute at issue is 
unconstitutional as applied.”5 Plaintiff gave timely notice of appeal to the North 
Carolina Court of Appeals.  
¶ 9 
 
In a split decision issued on 19 June 2018, the Court of Appeals reversed the 
trial court’s grant of summary judgment to EMPAC. Comm. to Elect Dan Forest v. 
Employees Pol. Action Comm. (EMPAC), 260 N.C. App. 1, 2 (2018). The majority 
reasoned that by “actual demonstrable damages” the trial court meant the Committee 
lacked standing to sue because Mr. Forest had not shown adequate “injury.” Relying 
on decisions of this Court, the majority held the Committee had standing to sue 
because the Disclosure Statute creates a private right of action for a candidate 
against a party when that party runs an ad in the candidate’s election violating the 
 
5 We note it is not clear from the trial court’s wording whether by this rationale it 
meant that plaintiff had not suffered injury sufficient to give it standing to sue or that the 
damage award imposed by the statute was constitutionally excessive without a showing of 
“actual demonstrable damages.” The parties and the Court of Appeals addressed both of these 
arguments on appeal, so both arguments are preserved. 
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Statute and “the breach of the private right, itself, constitutes an injury which 
provides standing to seek recourse.” Id. at 8. The majority further held the damages 
awarded under the Disclosure Statute were not unconstitutionally excessive even 
absent a showing of actual damages and that the Disclosure Statute did not per se 
violate the First Amendment, as EMPAC had argued on appeal. Id. at 11–12. 
¶ 10 
 
Chief Judge McGee dissented from the majority decision of the Court of 
Appeals, maintaining that plaintiff had not satisfied the condition precedent required 
by the Disclosure Statute and also that plaintiff lacked standing to sue because it had 
not shown “actual harm.” Id. at 13 (McGee, C.J., dissenting). While noting that 
“North Carolina courts are not constitutionally bound by the standing jurisprudence 
established by the United States Supreme Court[,]” the dissent also noted that North 
Carolina appellate courts had previously applied United States Supreme Court 
decisions to questions of standing and, therefore, United States Supreme Court 
precedent is binding on the Court of Appeals. Id. at 14. The dissent noted that our 
courts have used the language “injury in fact” to describe the standing inquiry and 
then cited and extensively reviewed the recent United States Supreme Court decision 
in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S.Ct. 1540 (2016), to support the proposition that the 
North Carolina Constitution imposes the same “injury-in-fact” requirements of a 
“concrete” and “particularized” injury as the United States Constitution imposes on 
federal courts, including the implication that a statutory conferral of standing, 
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without more, does not necessarily give a party sufficient interest to have standing to 
sue. Comm. to Elect Dan Forest, 260 N.C. App. at 14–16. The dissent concluded, 
following the reasoning in Spokeo, that a statutory grant of standing does not 
necessarily confer standing on a party under the North Carolina Constitution absent 
a concrete and particularized injury in fact and, because the interests vindicated by 
the statute were public and not private, the Committee had not suffered adequate 
harm to satisfy the injury requirements for standing. Id. at 19. 
¶ 11 
 
EMPAC appealed to this Court based on the dissent. This Court also granted 
EMPAC’s petition for discretionary review of additional issues, which asked this 
Court to determine whether the Disclosure Statute was an unconstitutional 
restriction on EMPAC’s free-speech rights and what standard should apply to that 
inquiry. 
II. 
Standard of Review 
¶ 12 
 
We review the grant or denial of summary judgment de novo. Variety 
Wholesalers, Inc. v. Salem Logistics Traffic Servs., LLC, 365 N.C. 520, 523 (2012).  
Summary judgment shall be granted “if the pleadings, depositions, answers to 
interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that 
there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that any party is entitled to a 
judgment as a matter of law.”  N.C.G.S. 1A-1, Rule 56(c) (2019).  In ruling on a 
summary judgment motion, we “consider the evidence in the light most favorable to 
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the non-movant, drawing all inferences in the non-movant’s favor.”  Morrell v. Hardin 
Creek, Inc., 371 N.C. 672, 680 (2018). “We review constitutional questions de novo.” 
State ex rel. McCrory v. Berger, 368 N.C. 633, 639 (2016).  
III. 
Analysis 
¶ 13 
 
Defendant argues plaintiff has failed to establish an “injury in fact” sufficient 
to have standing to sue under the North Carolina Constitution. Plaintiff argues that, 
unlike the United States Constitution, the North Carolina Constitution does not 
require a plaintiff to make an additional showing of injury where a statutory right of 
action is conferred by the General Assembly in order for the case to come within the 
power of our courts. Whether the North Carolina Constitution limits the jurisdiction 
of our courts in the same manner as the standing requirements Article III6 imposes 
on federal courts, including the requirement that the complaining party show “injury 
in fact,” even where an Act of the General Assembly, such as the Disclosure Statute 
here, expressly confers a statutory cause of action, is a question of first impression 
for this Court.7 While we have held the Court of Appeals errs in relying on federal 
standing doctrine, and, specifically, that “[w]hile federal standing doctrine can be 
instructive as to general principles . . . and for comparative analysis, the nuts and 
 
6 U.S. Const., Art. III, sec. 2. 
7 We note, as Chief Judge McGee did in dissent below, our Court of Appeals has 
previously decided that in some circumstances the federal standing requirements also apply 
to North Carolina law. See, e.g., Neuse River Foundation, Inc. v. Smithfield Foods, Inc., 155 
N.C. App. 110, 113–15 (2002); Coker v. DaimlerChrysler Corp., 172 N.C. App. 386, 390–92 
(2005). This Court is not bound by those precedents.  
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bolts of North Carolina standing doctrine are not coincident with federal standing 
doctrine[,]” Goldston v. State, 361 N.C. 26, 35 (2006), we have declined to delineate 
those differences. Our silence on this fundamental matter has engendered 
substantial confusion and disagreement in the lower courts and we end it today. 
¶ 14 
 
North Carolina courts recognized nearly sixteen years before Marbury v. 
Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), that it is the duty of the judicial branch to 
interpret the law, including the North Carolina Constitution. See Bayard v. 
Singleton, 1 N.C. (Mart.) 5 (1787). This duty includes the responsibility to construe 
the limits on the powers of the branches of government created by our Constitution. 
See, e.g., Cooper v. Berger, 370 N.C. 392 (2018); State ex rel. McCrory v. Berger, 368 
N.C. 633 (2016).  
A. Textual Analysis 
¶ 15 
 
As ours is a written constitution, we begin with the text. See State ex rel. 
Martin v. Preston, 325 N.C. 438, 449 (1989) (“In interpreting our Constitution—as in 
interpreting a statute—where the meaning is clear from the words used, we will not 
search for a meaning elsewhere.”).  
The will of the people as expressed in the Constitution is 
the supreme law of the land. In searching for this will or 
intent all cognate provisions are to be brought into view in 
their entirety and so interpreted as to effectuate the 
manifest purposes of the instrument. The best way to 
ascertain the meaning of a word or sentence in the 
Constitution is to read it contextually and compare it with 
other words and sentences with which it stands connected. 
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Id. at 449. In construing the document, “[w]e are guided by the basic principle of 
constitutional construction of giving effect to the intent of the framers.” State v. Webb, 
358 N.C. 92, 94 (2004) (cleaned up). “Constitutional provisions should be construed 
in consonance with the objects and purposes in contemplation at the time of their 
adoption. To ascertain the intent of those by whom the language was used, we must 
consider the conditions as they then existed and the purpose sought to be 
accomplished.” Id.  
¶ 16 
 
Black’s Law Dictionary defines “Standing” as “[a] party’s right to make a legal 
claim or seek judicial enforcement of a duty or right.” Black’s Law Dictionary (11th 
ed. 2019). The term does not appear in the North Carolina Constitution, nor does it 
appear in the United States Constitution.8 Instead, federal courts have construed 
 
8 Indeed, the term “standing” is of relatively recent vintage. See Joseph Vining, Legal 
Identity: The Coming of Age of Public Law 55 (1978) (“The word standing is rather recent in 
the basic judicial vocabulary and does not appear to have been commonly used until the 
middle of our own century. No authority that I have found introduces the term with proper 
explanations and apologies and announces that henceforth standing should be used to 
describe who may be heard by a judge. Nor was there any sudden adoption by tacit consent. 
The word appears here and there, spreading very gradually with no discernible pattern. 
Judges and lawyers found themselves using the term and did not ask why they did so or 
where it came from.”). One scholar’s search locates the United States Supreme Court’s first 
use of the term “standing” as an Article III limitation in Stark v. Wickard, 321 U.S. 288 
(1944). See Cass R. Sunstein, What’s Standing After Lujan? Of Citizen Suits, “Injuries,” and 
Article III, 91 Mich. L. Rev. 163, 169 (1992); see also id. (“The explosion of judicial interest in 
standing as a distinct body of constitutional law is an extraordinarily recent phenomenon.”). 
Another scholar identifies the first use of the term in this sense by a justice of that court in 
Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 464-68 (1939) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). See Steven L. 
Winter, The Metaphor of Standing and the Problem of Self-Governance, 40 Stan. L. Rev. 1371, 
1378 (1988). 
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Article III’s limited extension of federal “Judicial Power” to hear certain categories of 
“Cases” and “Controversies” as giving rise to the standing requirement. U.S. Const. 
Art. III, § 2; See, e.g., Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 94–95 (1968). Thus, at least as a 
matter of federal law, standing, along with other justiciability doctrines, is a 
limitation on the exercise of judicial power.  
¶ 17 
 
Article IV of the North Carolina Constitution delineates the State’s judicial 
power as follows: 
The judicial power of the State shall, except as provided in 
Section 3 of this Article, be vested in a Court for the Trial 
of Impeachments and in a General Court of Justice. The 
General Assembly shall have no power to deprive the 
judicial department of any power or jurisdiction that 
rightfully pertains to it as a co-ordinate department of the 
government, nor shall it establish or authorize any courts 
other than as permitted by this Article. 
N.C. Const. Art. IV, § 1. As a matter of textual interpretation, we note this provision 
does not expressly define the term “judicial power.” The provision also does not 
impose any express limitation on the exercise of the judicial power itself, such as the 
“case or controversy” requirement of the United States Constitution. To the contrary, 
the only limitation in the text of the provision protects the judicial power and 
jurisdiction of the courts from intrusion by the General Assembly except by vesting 
administrative agencies with judicial powers reasonably necessary to carry out their 
work under Article IV, Section 3. This provision was not enacted until the North 
Carolina Constitution of 1868, and has been readopted largely intact in subsequent 
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versions since then.9 See N.C. Const. of 1868, art. IV., § 1; N.C. Const. of 1868, art. 
IV, § 1 (1935); N.C. Const. Art. IV, § 1 (1971). 
¶ 18 
 
This Court has previously tied another provision of our Constitution to the 
concept of standing: the remedy clause, an aspect of the open courts provision of 
Article I, Section 18, which states “every person for an injury done him in his lands, 
goods, person, or reputation shall have remedy by due course of law[.]” N.C. Const. 
Art. I, § 18; see Mangum v. Raleigh Bd. of Adjustment, 362 N.C. 640, 642 (2008) 
(quoting N.C. Const. Art. I, § 18). A version of this provision was included in the 
Declaration of Rights in 1776, but the current text of the provision was not enacted 
until the 1868 Constitution as well. See N.C. Const. of 1776, Dec. of Rights, § XIII 
(1776); N.C. Const. of 1868, art. I, § 35. While the text of this provision does refer to 
“injury,” the plain meaning of the provision prohibits the use of government power to 
withhold a remedy to an injured party; it does not appear on its face to limit the 
exercise of judicial power to any particular set of circumstances. 
¶ 19 
 
If the framers of our Constitution intended any limitation on the exercise of 
judicial power analogous to the standing requirements imposed by the federal 
 
9 Although the Constitution of 1776 did not include this provision, it did provide for 
the appointment of judges to the “Supreme Court of Law and Equity” by the General 
Assembly, and the Declaration of Rights enacted at that time included the familiar 
constitutional touchstone “[t]hat the legislative, executive, and supreme judicial powers of 
government, ought to be forever separate and distinct from each other.” N.C. Const. of 1776, 
Declaration of Rights, § IV (1776). 
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constitution, it is not clear from the plain meaning of the constitutional text. 
Therefore, to determine what the framers meant by “judicial power” and other 
provisions including the remedy clause, in addition to “the text of the constitution,” 
we must examine “the historical context in which the people of North Carolina 
adopted the applicable constitutional provision, and our precedents.” McCrory, 368 
N.C. at 639. We begin with surveying standing at common law before turning to a 
view of standing in federal caselaw and, finally, to our own Constitution and caselaw. 
B. English Common Law History 
¶ 20 
 
English common law provides an important touchstone for determining the 
intent of the framers of both the federal and, in many cases, state constitutions.10 “ 
‘It is manifest,’ said the General Assembly of North Carolina in 1715 ‘that the laws 
of England are the laws of this Government, so far as they are compatible with our 
way of living and trade.’ ” State v. Willis, 255 N.C. 473, 474 (1961) (quoting 17 N.C. 
L. Rev. 205). In 1778, in a statute that has continued unaltered since, the General 
Assembly of our newly constituted State adopted the common law: 
All such parts of the common law as were heretofore in 
force and use within this State, or so much of the common 
law as is not destructive of, or repugnant to, or inconsistent 
with, the freedom and independence of this State and the 
form of government therein established, and which has not 
been otherwise provided for in whole or in part, not 
 
10 We are not the first state supreme court to plough the fields of English common law 
as it pertains to standing under state constitutions. See, e.g., Couey v. Atkins, 357 Or. 460 
(2015). 
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abrogated, repealed, or become obsolete, are hereby 
declared to be in full force within this State. 
N.C.G.S. § 4-1 (2019). “The ‘common law’ referred to in N.C.G.S. § 4-1 has been held 
to be the common law of England as of the date of the signing of the American 
Declaration of Independence.” Gwathmey v. State, 342 N.C. 287, 296 (1995). While 
the General Assembly may in general modify or repeal the common law, “any parts 
of the common law which are incorporated in our Constitution may be modified only 
by proper constitutional amendment.” Id. (citing State v. Mitchell, 202 N.C. 439 
(1932)). Thus, while not necessarily dispositive, the common law background is highly 
relevant to discerning the meaning of the constitutional text when it was adopted. 
¶ 21 
 
When examining “standing” (as a requirement for a personal stake in 
litigation) under English common law, the first thing one notes is its almost complete 
absence. Instead, “[b]efore and at the time of the framing [of the United States 
Constitution], the English practice was to allow strangers to have standing in the 
many cases involving the ancient prerogative writs.” Cass R. Sunstein, What’s 
Standing After Lujan? Of Citizen Suits, “Injuries,” and Article III, 91 Mich. L. Rev. 
163, 171 (1992) (hereinafter, Standing After Lujan). A “stranger” in this sense means 
“[s]omeone who is not party to a given transaction” or “[o]ne not standing toward 
another in some relation implied in the context,” therefore, one who lacks a personal 
stake in the litigation. “Stranger,” Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019). The 
prerogative writs for which courts recognized the authority of strangers to sue to 
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enforce public rights included the writs of certiorari, prohibition, mandamus, and quo 
warranto. See generally Louis L. Jaffe, Standing to Secure Judicial Review: Public 
Actions, 74 Harv. L. Rev. 1265 (1961) (hereinafter Standing to Secure); Raoul Berger, 
Standing to Sue in Public Actions: Is It a Constitutional Requirement?, 78 Yale L.J. 
816 (1969) (hereinafter, Standing to Sue); John L. Winter, The Metaphor of Standing 
and the Problem of Self-Governance, 40 Stan. L. Rev. 1371 (1988) (hereinafter, 
Metaphor).   
¶ 22 
 
The extraordinary writs of certiorari11 and prohibition12 both authorized such 
“stranger suits.” “The English tradition of locus standi in prohibition and certiorari 
is that ‘a stranger’ has standing, but relief in suits by strangers is discretionary. If, 
however, the official’s lack of ‘jurisdiction’ [ ] appeared on the face of the record, relief 
followed as [a matter] of course.” Jaffe, Standing to Secure, 74 Harv. L. Rev. at 1274. 
 
11 The prerogative writ of certiorari was the antecedent of this Court’s own writ of 
certiorari. See N.C. R. App. P. 21; see also N.C. Const. art. IV, § 12 (“the [Supreme] Court 
may issue any remedial writs necessary to give it general supervision and control over the 
proceedings of the other courts.”). As used by the King’s Bench, however, it had a narrower 
function, generally reviewing the decisions of lower courts only for exceeding their 
jurisdiction in particular cases. Daniel R. Coquillette, The Anglo-American Legal Heritage 
248 (1999). However, the writ was also used to regulate administrative agencies performing 
judicial functions. See Berger, Standing to Sue, 78 Yale L.J. at 821–22. 
12 Prohibition was “[a]n extraordinary writ issued by an appellate court to prevent a 
lower court from exceeding its jurisdiction or to prevent a nonjudicial officer or entity from 
exercising a power.” “Prohibition,” Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019). “The writ is so 
ancient that forms of it are given in Glanville . . . , the first book of English law, written in 
the year 1189.” Forrest G. Ferris & Forrest G. Ferris, Jr., The Law of Extraordinary Legal 
Remedies 414–15 (1926). Like the writs of certiorari and mandamus, it persists today. See 
N.C. R. App. P. 22. 
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The locus standi rule permitting stranger suits “has been explained on the ground 
that a usurpation of jurisdiction, being an encroachment upon the royal prerogative, 
caused such concern that it made little difference who raised the question.” Id.  
¶ 23 
 
First, English courts strongly defended the right of strangers to bring writs of 
prohibition. In a notable example, clergy complained to the king of excessive grants 
of writs of prohibition against ecclesiastical courts. In response, according to Lord 
Coke, “all the judges of England, and the barons of the Exchequer, with one 
unanimous consent,” answered the charges in a seminal document called Articulo 
Cleri. The judges stated as follows in their Third Answer to the complaints: 
Prohibitions by law are to be granted at any time to 
restraine a court to intermeddle with, or execute any thing, 
which by law they ought not to hold plea of, and they are 
much mistaken that maintaine the contrary . . . . And the 
kings courts that may award prohibitions, being informed 
either by the parties themselves, or by any stranger, that 
any court temporall or ecclesiasticall doth hold plea of that 
(whereof they have not jurisdiction) may lawfully prohibit 
the same, as well after judgment and execution, as before. 
 
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Edward Coke, 2 Institutes of the Laws of England 602 (1797) (emphasis added).13 
Similarly, the writ of certiorari in English practice could be brought by strangers.14 
¶ 24 
 
The prerogative writ of mandamus was also extended to strangers without a 
personal stake. Professor Louis Jaffe has described the writ of mandamus15 as being 
“invented” by Lord Coke, sitting on the King’s Bench, “if not out of whole cloth then 
at least out of a few rags and tatters[.]” Jaffe, Standing to Secure, 74 Harv. L. Rev. at 
1269. In James Bagg’s Case, Lord Coke, reasoning the first assertion of jurisdiction 
through the writ was justified “so that no Wrong or Injury, either Publick or Private, 
can be done, but that it shall be reformed or punished by due Course of Law.”16 11 
 
13 Professor Raoul Berger makes the following observation regarding this passage: “No 
English court, so far as I can discover, has ever rejected the authority of Articulo Cleri or 
denied that a writ of prohibition may be granted at the suit of a stranger. On the contrary, 
Coke was cited by the 18th century Abridgments and by English courts throughout the 19th 
century, and his rule remains the law in England today. Thus, at the time of the [American] 
Revolution, the ‘courts in Westminster’ afforded to a stranger a means of attack on 
jurisdictional excesses without requiring a showing of injury to his personal interest.” Berger, 
Standing to Sue, 78 Yale L.J. at 819–20 (footnotes omitted); see also Wadsworth v. Queen of 
Spain, 17 Q.B. 171, 214 (1851) (“[W]e find it laid down in books of the highest authority that, 
where the court to which prohibition is to go has no jurisdiction, a prohibition may be granted 
upon the request of a stranger, as well as of the defendant himself.” (citing 2 Coke 607)). 
14 In Arthur v. Commissioners of Sewers, 88 Eng. Rep. 237 (K.B. 1725), for instance, 
the King’s Bench distinguished between a party with a personal stake and “one who comes 
merely as a stranger,” in determining whether the remedy of a writ of certiorari was 
mandatory or merely discretionary. 
15 Mandamus being then, as now, “[a] writ issued by a court to compel performance of 
a particular act by a lower court or a governmental officer or body[.]” “Mandamus,” Black’s 
Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019); see Sutton v. Figgatt, 280 N.C. 89, 93 (1971) (“The writ of 
mandamus is an order from a court of competent jurisdiction to a board, corporation, inferior 
court, officer or person commanding the performance of a specified official duty imposed by 
law.”); N.C. R. App. P. 22. 
16 Lord Coke’s rationale for the assertion of jurisdiction through mandamus is, as 
further discussed below, an exposition of Magna Carta that two-and-a-half centuries later 
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Coke 93b, 98a, 77 Eng. Rep. 1271, 1278 (K.B. 1615). English cases have long held 
that, in matters of public right, anyone may seek the writ of mandamus to enforce 
the public’s interest.17 See People ex rel. Case v. Collins, 19 Wend. 56, 65-66 (N.Y. Sup. 
Ct. 1837) (collecting English cases in which party obtaining mandamus in name of 
king was a private person without a personal interest); id. at 65 (“It is at least the 
right, if not the duty of every citizen to interfere and see that a public offence be 
properly pursued and punished, and that a public grievance be remedied.”). 
¶ 25 
 
The writ for quo warranto also contemplated suit by a stranger.18 See, e.g., Rex 
v. Smith, 100 Eng. Rep. 740 (1790) (discussing Rex v. Brown (1789), in which writ of 
quo warranto was granted despite “it [] not appear[ing that] the party making the 
application ha[d] any connection with the corporation [(a municipal government)] 
because “the ground on which this application is made to enforce a general Act of 
Parliament, which interests all the corporations of the kingdom; and therefore it is 
 
would become the remedy clause in our Constitution’s Declaration of Rights. Cf. N.C. Const. 
Art. I, § 18 (“every person for an injury done him in his lands, goods, person, or reputation 
shall have remedy by due course of law[.]”). 
17 Professor Jaffe notes “I have encountered no case before 1807 in which the standing 
of plaintiff is mooted, though the lists of the cases in the digest strongly suggest the possibility 
that the plaintiff in some of them was without a personal interest.” Jaffe, Standing to Secure, 
74 Harv. L. Rev. at 1271. 
18 “Quo Warranto,” was “[a] common-law writ used to inquire into the authority by 
which a public office is held or a franchise is claimed.” “Quo Warranto,” Black’s Law 
Dictionary (11th ed. 2019). The writ of quo warranto was ultimately modified by England’s 
Statute of Anne, 9 Anne c. 20 (1710), after which the statutory “information in nature of quo 
warranto” lied instead. See Saunders v. Gatling, 81 N.C. 298, 300 (1879). 
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no objection that the party applying is not a member of the corporation.”). See also 
Berger, Standing to Sue, 78 Yale L. J. at 823 (discussing same). 
¶ 26 
 
Finally, English law recognized the practice of “informers” and “relators” 
actions, which presaged modern “private attorney general actions.” 
[“Informers” actions] went beyond making available 
procedures to control unlawful conduct, and offered 
financial inducements to strangers to prosecute such 
actions, provided for by a “very large” number of statutes 
“in which the public at large was encouraged to enforce 
obedience to statutes by the promise of a share of the 
penalty imposed for disobedience . . .” Such informers had 
“no interest whatever in the controversy other than that 
given by statute,” and the pecuniary reward thus offered to 
strangers was little calculated to read cognate remedies 
narrowly. 
Berger, Standing to Sue, 78 Yale L. J. at 825–26 (footnotes omitted).19 A “relator” 
action, often for a writ of quo warranto, could be brought by the Attorney General, 
according to Blackstone, “at the relation of any person desiring to prosecute the same, 
(who is then styled the relator). . . .” William Blackstone, 3 Commentaries on the Laws 
of England 264. The relator need have no personal interest in the matter apart from 
the public interest. See, e.g., Rex v. Mayor of Hartford, 91 Eng. Rep. 325 (1700) (quo 
warranto issued against mayor and alderman to show ‘by what authority they 
 
19 See also Martin v. Trout, 199 U.S. 212, 225 (1905) (“Statutes providing for actions 
by a common informer, who himself had no interest whatever in the controversy other than 
that given by statute, have been in existence hundreds of years in England, and in this 
country ever since the foundation of our government.”).  
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admitted persons to be freemen of the corporation who did not inhabit in the borough. 
The motion was pretended to be on behalf of freemen, who by this means were 
encroached upon.” (emphasis added)). 
¶ 27 
 
In summary, under English common law practice, which informs our 
interpretation of the intent of the framers of our State’s constitutional text, the 
concept of “standing,” as a personal stake, aggrievement, or injury as a prerequisite 
for litigation brought to vindicate public rights, was basically absent.20 Instead, the 
English practice included the prerogative writs and informers and relators actions, 
which “took forms astonishingly similar to the ‘standingless’ public action or ‘private 
attorney general’ model that modern standing law is designed to thwart.” Winter, 
Metaphor, 40 Stan. L. Rev. at 1396. To the extent the framers of the North Carolina 
Constitution were informed by the English common law which so suffused the 
development of law in America in crafting our constitutional text, we must conclude 
the use of the term “judicial power” excluded any requirement that there be “actual 
harm” or “injury in fact” apart from the existence of a legal right or cause of action to 
have standing to invoke the power of the courts in this State. This was almost 
certainly the intent of the original framers of the North Carolina Constitution in 1776 
in establishing a “Supreme Court of Justice in Law and Equity” and recognizing a 
 
20 See Jaffe, Standing to Secure, 74 Harv. L. Rev. at 1270; Berger, Standing to Sue, 78 
Yale L.J. at 827 Winter, Metaphor, 40 Stan. L. Rev. at 1374. 
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“judicial power[]” to be preserved “ever separate and distinct” from the legislative and 
executive powers. N.C. Const. of 1776, Declaration of Rights, §  IV (1776).  
¶ 28 
 
Of course, Article IV of our Constitution which now delineates the judicial 
power is a product of the transformative 1868 Reconstruction convention and the 
most recent reorganization of our Constitution in 1971, along with the major 
amendments in 1935. Therefore, one may object that, whatever the meaning of the 
term as used by colonial lawyers raised on the English common law in 1776, that 
meaning no longer holds today. We therefore examine the law of standing as it 
evolved in America and, in particular, North Carolina to determine if that meaning 
still applies. 
C. The American Experience 
¶ 29 
 
In the century following the Revolution, the American states, including North 
Carolina, inherited the English common law of prerogative writs and, in general, 
drew a distinction between writs enforcing private rights, which required a showing 
of legal right or injury (i.e., the existence of a cause of action, as a matter of 
substantive—not constitutional—law), and those enforcing public rights, which could 
be brought by anyone or, at its most restrictive, a citizen or taxpayer. See Couey, 357 
Or. at 496–98 (summarizing the caselaw of the period). Furthermore, in the late-
nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries state courts, including in North Carolina, 
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began expressing a concern with mootness, not as a constitutional but as a 
discretionary, prudential limitation on judicial power. See id. at 498–99.  
¶ 30 
 
One early case reveals the early framers’ conception of the judicial powers of 
this Court, including the power to hear prerogative writs, relative to the English 
courts. In Griffin v. Graham, (1 Hawks) 8 N.C. 96 (1820), this Court, acting in equity, 
heard a complaint from the would-be heirs of a decedent who instead sought to create 
a trust for the establishment of a free school for indigent students. Griffin, 8 N.C. at 
97–99. This Court held the charitable trust was valid and the court had jurisdiction 
to declare it so because, per the reporter’s headnotes, 
though the jurisdiction of charities in England belong[ed] 
to the Court of Chancery, not as a Court of Equity, but as 
administering the prerogative of the Crown, the Court of 
Equity of this state hath the like jurisdiction: for, upon the 
revolution, the political rights and duties of the King 
devolved upon the people in their sovereign capacity; and 
they, by their representatives, have placed this power in 
the Courts of Equity, by the acts of Assembly of 1778, c. 5, 
and 1782, c. 11.  
Griffin, 8 N.C. at 97. Thus, this Court necessarily recognized it inherited the same 
jurisdiction, including the expansive prerogative writs, now in the name of the 
sovereign people rather than the Crown, through the statute now codified at N.C.G.S. 
§ 4-1, discussed above. Although the language is not couched in constitutional terms, 
this early decision interpreting the acts of the first session of our General Assembly 
is persuasive evidence of what the framers of our 1776 Constitution believed the 
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content and limits of judicial power to be. Chief Justice Taylor, speaking for a 
majority of the Court, recognized, as a matter of parens patriae, the authority of the 
Court of Chancery in England (and thus, by statutory succession, the Court of Equity 
in North Carolina) to hear an “information for a charitable trust” filed ex officio by 
the Attorney General “at the relation of some informant, where it is necessary.”21 Id. 
at 133 (emphasis added). 
¶ 31 
 
Broad access to the prerogative writs for vindication of public rights without a 
showing of personal interest was widely accepted in the nineteenth century. By 1875, 
the United States Supreme Court recognized “[t]here [wa]s . . . a decided 
preponderance of American authority in favor of the doctrine, that private persons 
may move for a [writ of] mandamus to enforce a public duty, not due to the 
government as such, without the intervention of the government law-officer.” Union 
Pac. R. Co. v. Hall, 91 U.S. 343, 355 (1875) (citing many cases from several states). 
 
21 Although this Court did not address what, if any, interest the relator must have to 
invoke the court’s jurisdiction, William J. Gaston, who would become a justice of this Court, 
was one of the trustees and is reported to have argued before the Court that North Carolina 
law permitted a writ of mandamus filed by a relator in the absence of a personal interest to 
vindicate the public’s interest. 8 N.C. at 124–25 (“It is well settled, that the discretion of the 
trustees does not make it the less a charity: nor does it oppose the right of this Court to 
interfere; for, in all cases of discretionary powers, if they be abused, the Court will interfere, 
and by virtue of its general jurisdiction over trusts, will take the trust out of impure hands, 
and place it in honester. And, upon a bill in the name of the Attorney-General, (and any 
person, however remotely concerned, may be relator,) the Court will compel the trust to act, 
or to assign the trust.”).  
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The Supreme Court of Illinois, in one of the cases cited therein, summarized the 
difference between private rights and public rights: 
The question, who shall be the relator . . . depends upon 
the object to be attained by the writ. Where the remedy is 
resorted to for the purpose of enforcing a private right, the 
person interested in having the right enforced, must 
become the relator. . . . A stranger is not permitted 
officiously to interfere, and sue out a mandamus in a 
matter of private concern. But where the object is the 
enforcement of a public right, the People are regarded as 
the real party, and the relator need not show that he has 
any legal interest in the result. It is enough that he is 
interested, as a citizen, in having the laws executed, and 
the right in question enforced. 
Pike Cnty. Comm’rs v. Illinois ex rel. Metz, 11 Ill. 202, 207–08 (1849).  
¶ 32 
 
This Court followed the majority trend in recognizing the right of persons 
without any personal interest or injury to pursue actions to vindicate a public right 
throughout the nineteenth century. For instance, this Court, without any further 
showing or discussion of his interest, permitted a plaintiff “as a citizen and taxpayer 
of the state,” to bring an action for mandamus against the secretary of state. Carr v. 
Coke, 116 N.C. 223, 223 (1895). 
¶ 33 
 
Another example concerns actions by private relators under section 366 of the 
Code of Civil Procedure of 1868, which, largely following the Statute of Anne, 
abolished the writ of quo warranto and provided a statutory action in the nature of a 
writ of quo warranto for private persons as relator to challenge the wrongful 
occupation of municipal offices in the name of the state, with the permission of the 
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Attorney General. In 1892, this Court heard an action under the statute filed in the 
name of the state by a taxpayer and citizen of Greensboro against the appointment 
of a police chief, who challenged the suit on the grounds that the relator “d[id] not 
allege that he is entitled to the office, nor has any interest in its emoluments, and 
therefore is not a proper relator.” State ex rel. Foard v. Hall, 111 N.C. 369, 369 (1892). 
This Court held that, under the statute, “[i]t is not necessary that the relator should 
have such interest.” Id. This Court reasoned that “In many instances . . . when an 
office is illegally held or usurped, there is no one else who can claim a title thereto. 
In such cases, unless a voter or taxpayer (not a mere stranger)22 can bring the action 
by leave of the attorney general, there would often be no remedy[.]” Id. at 370. Other 
cases interpreting the quo warranto statute show that any private person can bring 
an action under it and the purpose of the statute is to vindicate public, not private, 
rights. See Ellison v. Raleigh, 89 N.C. 125, 132 (1883) (holding the statute “seems to 
contemplate the action as one open upon the complaint of any private party[.]”); 
Saunders v. Gatling, 81 N.C. 298, 301 (1879) (“It is not merely an action to redress 
the grievance of a private person who claims a right to the office, but the public has 
 
22 Although this Court limited the class of persons who could bring the action to 
citizens or taxpayers as opposed to “mere strangers,” this was a matter of statutory, rather 
than constitutional, interpretation. This Court later cited Hall in dismissing a complaint 
brought by a relator under the statute for failing to allege as a matter of substantive law 
under the relevant code section that he was a citizen or taxpayer of the county and thus did 
not show he was a “party in interest” under the Code of Civil Procedure. State ex rel. Hines 
v. Vann, 118 N.C. 3, 6 (1896) (citing N.C. Code Civ. P. of 1868, § 177). 
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an interest in the question which the legislature by these provisions of the code seems 
to have considered paramount to that of the private rights of the persons 
aggrieved[.]”).  
¶ 34 
 
These cases demonstrate that in North Carolina, as in a “decided 
preponderance” of states throughout the nineteenth century, see Union Pac. R. Co., 
91 U.S. at 355, the writ of mandamus and the successor by statute of the writ of quo 
warranto were both broadly available for the vindication of public rights common to 
all citizens and taxpayers, without any required showing of a personal interest. Even 
where such a showing was required, such as where a private right was asserted, it 
was treated as a matter of substantive, not constitutional law.23 
D. Federal Standing Law and the “Case” or “Controversy” Requirement 
¶ 35 
 
Before resolving the question at hand under the North Carolina Constitution, 
we must examine the federal law of standing arising under the United States 
 
23 Standing is not the only modern “justiciability” doctrine not located in the North 
Carolina Constitution in the nineteenth century. For instance, despite the lack of statutory 
or common law authority, this Court at times has approved of courts in equity advising 
trustees as to the discharge of trusts. See, e.g., Simpson v. Wallace, 83 N.C. 477, 479 (1880). 
In certain cases, mootness, too, was regarded, not as a matter of constitutional law, but a 
matter of discretion and prudence. See State ex rel. Martin v. Sloan, 69 N.C. 128, 128 (1873) 
(holding when “neither party has any interest in the case except as to cost[,]” this Court “[is] 
not in the habit of deciding the case.”); State v. Richmond & D.R. Co., 74 N.C. 287, 289 (1876) 
(holding the same). However, this Court expressly held that “[i]f feigned issues ”—those 
collusively brought to test the validity of a law—“ were ever valid in this State, they are 
abolished by the Constitution, Art. 4, § 1.” Blake v. Askew, 76 N.C. 325, 326 (1877). 
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Constitution.24 Federal justiciability doctrines—standing, ripeness, mootness, and 
the prohibition against advisory opinions—are not explicit within the constitutional 
text, but are the fruit of judicial interpretation of Article III’s extension of the “judicial 
Power” to certain “Cases” or “Controversies.”25 U.S. Const. art. III, § 2; see 
DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332, 341–42 (2006) (“[N]o principle is more 
fundamental to the judiciary’s proper role in our system of government than the 
constitutional limitation of federal-court jurisdiction to actual cases or controversies.” 
(cleaned up)); Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U.S. 43, 64 (1997) 
(“Standing to sue or defend is an aspect of the case or controversy requirement.”). 
Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing for the United States Supreme Court, articulated 
the complex role of the federal case or controversy requirement: 
 
24 One might query whether this digression is necessary. As the law of standing 
evolved essentially and originally as a matter of federal law in the twentieth century, and 
our courts have on certain occasions turned to federal law to apply standing under our own 
laws, we believe it is. See Wright & Miller, 13A Fed. Prac. & Proc. Juris. § 3531.1 (3d ed. 
2020) (“As academic as the history may seem, it serves vitally important purposes. Current 
standing law is an incredibly rich tapestry woven from all the strands that have been twisted 
by the wheels of time. No single approach has become finally dominant; none has gone to 
eternal rest. Workaday answers to many specific questions can be found in some areas, but 
other questions can be argued and answered only with full knowledge of the intellectual 
heritage.”). It is particularly necessary to understand the odd federal “strands twisted” into 
the fabric of the law of North Carolina. 
25 The political question doctrine, another justiciability doctrine, has its roots in part 
in Article III, but also in the “textually demonstrable constitutional commitment” of certain 
questions to the other “political departments” by other parts of the Constitution’s text, see, 
e.g., Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224, 229 (1993) (holding nonjusticiable Senate’s 
impeachment proceedings due to Article I’s provision that Senate has “sole Power to try all 
Impeachments”), and prudential considerations regarding the appropriate role of federal 
courts in the federal constitutional schema. See Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 217 (1962).  
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[T]hose two words have an iceberg quality, containing 
beneath their surface simplicity submerged complexities 
which go to the very heart of our constitutional form of 
government. 
Embodied 
in 
the 
words 
‘cases’ 
and 
‘controversies’ are two complementary but somewhat 
different limitations. In part those words limit the business 
of federal courts to questions presented in an adversary 
context and in a form historically viewed as capable of 
resolution through the judicial process. And in part those 
words define the role assigned to the judiciary in a 
tripartite allocation of power to assure that the federal 
courts will not intrude into areas committed to the other 
branches of government. Justiciability is the term of art 
employed to give expression to this dual limitation placed 
upon federal courts by the case and controversy doctrine. 
Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 94–95 (1968). The meaning of these provisions to the 
framers is not described and the only evidence in the records of the Constitutional 
Convention is James Madison’s statement that judicial power ought “to be limited to 
cases of a judiciary nature.”26 As we previously noted, the North Carolina 
Constitution lacks this provision. 
¶ 36 
 
The prohibition against advisory opinions by federal courts is, by far, “the 
oldest and most consistent thread in the federal law of justiciability[.]” Wright & 
Miller, 13A Fed. Prac. & Proc. Juris. § 3529.1 (3d ed. 2020). The rule against advisory 
opinions plainly originates in Article III’s case or controversy requirement, as well as 
concerns about separation of powers. Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681, 700 (1997) 
 
26 See F. Andrew Hessick, Standing, Injury in Fact, and Private Rights, 93 Cornell L. 
Rev. 275, 278 (2008) (quoting 2 Records of the Federal Conventions of 1787 at 430 (Max 
Farrand ed., rev. ed. 1966)). 
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(“[T]he judicial power to decide cases and controversies does not include the provision 
of purely advisory opinions to the Executive, or permit the federal courts to resolve 
non justiciable questions.” (footnotes omitted)). The prohibition was first recognized 
in the refusal of the Supreme Court to give advice to the Secretary of War and 
Congress on pension applications from veterans of the Revolution, in support of which 
the Court held “ ‘[N]either the Legislature nor the Executive branches can 
constitutionally assign to the judicial any duties, but such as are properly judicial, 
and to be performed in a judicial manner.’ ” Hayburn’s Case, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 408, 410 
n.† (1792) (an unnumbered footnote quoting the circuit court opinion below). 
Moreover, in a famous letter submitted in response to Secretary of State Thomas 
Jefferson’s request for the Court to advise President Washington on certain questions 
about the neutral status of the United States in the French Revolutionary Wars of 
1793, Chief Justice John Jay writing for the members of the Court but not as the 
Court, emphasized the separation of powers in declining to do so: 
The lines of separation drawn by the Constitution between 
the three departments of the government—their being in 
certain respects checks upon each other—and our being 
judges of a court of the last resort—are considerations 
which afford strong arguments against the propriety of our 
extrajudicially deciding the questions alluded to; especially 
as the power given by the Constitution to the President, of 
calling on the heads of departments for opinions, seems to 
have been purposely as well as expressly united to the 
executive departments. 
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 Letter from Chief Justice John Jay and the Associate Justices to President George 
Washington, 
August 
8, 
1793 
(cleaned 
up) 
(available 
at 
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-13-02-0263). As an aspect of 
the prohibition against advisory opinions, the Court held it could not hear collusive 
suits, and that exercise of the judicial power required adverse parties. See, e.g., Poe 
v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 505 (1961); United States v. Johnson, 319 U.S. 302, 305 
(1943). 
¶ 37 
 
In contrast to the well-established rule against advisory opinions, standing 
doctrine is of comparatively recent origin. See Winter, Metaphor, 40 Stan. L. Rev. at 
1374   (“[A] painstaking search of the historical material demonstrates that—for the 
first 150 years of the Republic—the Framers, the first Congresses, and the Court 
were oblivious to the modern conception either that standing is a component of the 
constitutional phrase ‘cases or controversies’ or that it is a prerequisite for seeking 
governmental compliance with the law.”). As federal standing evolved from a 
requirement that a party have a cause of action to an increasingly restrictive tool 
curbing access to federal courts, the doctrine has been challenged by many scholars 
for inconsistency. See Gene R. Nichol, Jr., Rethinking Standing, 72 Cal. L. Rev. 68, 
68 (1984) (“In perhaps no other area of constitutional law has scholarly commentary 
been so uniformly critical.”). Even the Supreme Court has acknowledged this 
doctrinal confusion. See Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for 
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Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 475 (1982) (“We need not mince 
words when we say that the concept of ‘Art. III standing” has not been defined with 
complete consistency . . . .”).  
¶ 38 
 
From the founding to well into the twentieth century, cases addressing the 
justiciability of parties to maintain a suit turned on whether the party could maintain 
a cause of action. See Sunstein, Standing After Lujan, 91 Mich. L. Rev. at 170. If the 
common law or a statute gave them a cause of action, that was all that was required 
for the case to come within the judicial power.  See Osborn v. Bank of the United 
States, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 738, 819 (1824) (“[The judicial] power is capable of acting 
only when the subject is submitted to it, by a party who asserts his rights in the form 
prescribed by law. It then becomes a case, and the constitution declares that the 
judicial power shall extend to all cases arising under the constitution, laws and 
treaties of the United States.”); Winter, Metaphor, 40 Stan. L. Rev. at 1395 (standing 
was contained in the question “whether the matter before it fit one of the recognized 
forms of action.”). As in state courts, federal courts also recognized the right to sue to 
redress public harms without a showing of a particular private interest. One of the 
most notable early cases addressing the justiciability of a case when the party lacked 
a particular interest or injury was Union Pacific Railroad v. Hall, 91 U.S. 343 (1875), 
in which the Supreme Court allowed a mandamus petition brought by merchants 
under a general mandamus statute to compel a chartered railroad to build a railroad 
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line. The Supreme Court recognized the merchants attempted to enforce “a duty to 
the public generally” and they “had no interest other than such as belonged to others.” 
Id. at 354. The ultimate question—“whether a writ of mandamus to compel the 
performance of a public duty may be issued at the instance of a private relator” 
without a “special injury”—was answered in the affirmative. Id. at 354. The existence 
of the right to bring an action for mandamus under the statute, confirmed by the 
Court’s examination of the widespread acceptance of public actions without particular 
injuries in America, settled the question; the Court raised no issue of an additional 
showing of a “peculiar and special” injury being required as a matter of constitutional 
law. Id. at 355. Moreover, the existence since the first Congress of federal qui tam 
and informer’s actions that permitted individuals to file suit without a personal 
interest support the view that Article III was not understood to impose any greater 
requirement for injury or a personal interest where a congressional act created a 
cause of action.  See Sunstein, Standing After Lujan, 91 Mich. L. Rev. at 176–77. 
¶ 39 
 
Standing doctrine as a distinct constitutional requirement under Article III 
first arose in the middle part of the twentieth century, largely at the hands of Justices 
Brandeis and, later, Frankfurter, partially in response to the emergence of the 
administrative state and constitutional attacks on progressive federal legislative 
programs. See Sunstein, Standing After Lujan, 91 Mich. L. Rev. at 179; F. Andrew 
Hessick, Standing, Injury in Fact, and Private Rights, 93 Cornell L. Rev. 275, 276 
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(2008).27 These cases primarily involved constitutional challenges to legislative 
enactments and government action without a common law cause of action or one 
arising under a statute. Importantly, in most of the cases, there was also no clear 
right created in the federal constitution that did not run to the public at large. See, 
e.g., Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, 488 (1923) (Tenth Amendment challenge); 
Ex Parte Levitt, 302 U.S. 633, 633 (1937) (challenge alleged violation of Article I, § 6). 
The cases of this period, although not until later explicitly defining the inquiry in 
terms of “standing,” were consistent with the longstanding concern only that the 
plaintiff show some right under common law, a statutory source, or the constitution.28  
See, e.g., Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Comm. v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 159 (1951) 
 
27 As several commentators have noted, in a pair of decisions, Justice Frankfurter 
attempted to ground the new standing requirements in the historical practice of the “courts 
at Westminster,” even though these requirements are essentially inconsistent with the 
history summarized above. See, e.g., Sunstein, Standing After Lujan, 91 Mich. L. Rev. at 172; 
Winter, Metaphor, 40 Stan. L. Rev. at 1394–95; Berger, Standing to Sue, 78 Yale L.J. at 816. 
For an empirical review of Supreme Court decisions by parts validating and criticizing the 
claimed impact of liberal justices, including Justices Brandeis and Frankfurter, in this early 
period, see generally Daniel E. Ho & Erica L. Ross, Did Liberal Justices Invent the Standing 
Doctrine? An Empirical Study of the Evolution of Standing, 1921-2006, 62 Stan. L. Rev. 591 
(2010). 
28 Although as Professor Sunstein notes the direct cause of action arising under the 
constitution recognized in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of 
Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), was still a long way off, Sunstein, Standing After Lujan, 91 
Mich. L. Rev. at 180, as Professor Andrew Hessick notes, early in this period the Supreme 
Court recognized there was standing arising directly under the Fourteenth Amendment in 
Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 535–36 (1925). See Hessick, Standing, Injury in 
Fact, and Private Rights, 93 Cornell L. Rev. at 291, n.97. For our purposes, the relevance of 
Pierce is that the plaintiffs’ standing to sue was recognized where there was a right under 
the constitution. 
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(Frankfurter, J., concurring) (“Only on the ground that the organizations assert no 
interest protected in analogous situations at common law, by statute, or by the 
Constitution, therefore, can plausible challenge to their ‘standing’ here be made.”). In 
the absence of such a “legal right,” factual injury was insufficient. See Tennessee Elec. 
Power Co. v. Tennessee Val. Authority, 306 U.S. 118, 137–38 (1939). 
¶ 40 
 
In the most notable case of this period, Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447 
(1923), the Supreme Court held a person may not sue only as a federal taxpayer who 
shares a grievance in common with all other federal taxpayers.29 In Frothingham, the 
plaintiff sued as a federal taxpayer seeking to restrain the expenditure of federal 
funds on grants to the states through the Maternity Act of 1921 by arguing it violated 
the Tenth Amendment reservation of powers to the states. Id. at 486. The Supreme 
Court rejected the challenge. In holding the plaintiff’s suit could not be maintained, 
the Court first held the plaintiff could not avail herself of the equitable powers of the 
federal courts because, as opposed to a taxpayer of a municipality, her “interest in 
the 
moneys 
of 
the 
[federal] 
treasury . . . is 
comparatively 
minute 
and 
indeterminable,” and, therefore, obtaining an injunction as a remedy is inappropriate 
Id. at 487. The Court suggested that concerns about administrability and separation 
 
29 The Supreme Court’s first dismissal under this rationale was decided a year before 
in an opinion authored by Justice Brandeis. See Fairchild v. Hughes, 258 U.S. 126 (1922) 
(“Plaintiffs alleged interest [as a taxpayer] in the question submitted is not such as to afford 
a basis for this proceeding.”). See Winter, Metaphor, 40 Stan. L.R. at 1376. 
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of powers informed its decision on the exercise of courts’ equitable power. Id. at 487 
(“If one taxpayer may champion and litigate such a cause, then every other taxpayer 
may do the same, not only in respect of the statute here under review, but also in 
respect of every other appropriation act and statute whose administration requires 
the outlay of public money, and whose validity may be questioned.”). The Court 
provided a further rationale: it “ha[s] no power per se” of judicial review, but “[t]hat 
question may be considered only when the justification for some direct injury suffered 
or threatened, presenting a justiciable issue, is made to rest upon such an act.” Id. at 
488. Thus “[t]he party who invokes the power must be able to show, not only that the 
statute is invalid, but that he has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining 
some direct injury as the result of its enforcement, and not merely that he suffers in 
some indefinite way in common with people generally.” Id.  
¶ 41 
 
While Frothingham first explained the prohibition against taxpayer standing, 
Ex parte Levitt, 302 U.S. 633 (1937), announced the prohibition against citizen 
standing. In Levitt, the plaintiff sued “as a citizen and a member of the bar of [the 
United States Supreme] Court” challenging the appointment of Justice Hugo Black 
as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court arguing that, as a sitting United States 
Senator, he was ineligible under Article I, § 6.30 302 U.S. 635–36. The Supreme Court 
 
30 The clause in question provides that “No Senator or Representative shall, during 
the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the 
United States, which . . . the Emoluments whereof shall have been [i]ncreased during such 
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held, citing Frothingham and other cases involving third-party standing, “[i]t is an 
established principle that to entitle a private individual to invoke the judicial power 
to determine the validity of executive or legislative action he must show that he has 
sustained, or is immediately in danger of sustaining, a direct injury as the result of 
that action and it is not sufficient that he has merely a general interest common to 
all members of the public.” Id. at 636.  
¶ 42 
 
Taken together, Frothingham and Levitt establish a general prohibition 
against “generalized grievances”—in which the plaintiff alleges only an injury he 
shares in common with all other taxpayers or citizens and alleges no direct injury—
to challenge the constitutionality of legislative or executive action in federal court. 
Some have contended Frothingham’s prohibition on taxpayer standing and its 
reasoning is “prudential”—that is, it is a product of judicial self-restraint—while 
others contend it is constitutional and a product of the case or controversy 
requirement.31 Indeed, even one of the progenitors of modern standing, Justice 
Brandeis, conceived of it as a prudential, not jurisdictional limitation.32 See 
 
time.” U.S. Const. art. I, § 6, cl.2. The salaries of the Supreme Court had been raised while 
Justice Black served as Senator. 
31 Professor Jaffe, for instance, contended Frothingham can be reconciled with the 
history of ‘standingless’ public actions in that it “can rest on the ground that until Congress 
decides otherwise, there is no need for a generally available federal taxpayer’s action.” Louis 
L. Jaffe, Standing to Secure Judicial Review: Private Actions, 75 Harv. L. Rev. 255, 303 
(1961).  
32 Whether a standing requirement such as the prohibition against generalized 
grievances and attendant requirement for “direct injury” is prudential or jurisdictional may 
seem academic, but it is a vital distinction. If a limitation is adopted as an exercise in 
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Ashwander v. Tenn. Valley Auth., 297 U.S. 288, 346, 346–48 (1936) (Brandeis, J., 
concurring) (holding that “[t]he court will not pass upon the validity of a statute upon 
complaint of one who fails to show that he is injured by its operation[,]” is a rule of 
constitutional avoidance the Supreme Court developed “for its own governance in the 
cases confessedly within its jurisdiction.” (citing Mellon, 262 U.S. 447) (emphasis 
added)). 
¶ 43 
 
An important development in the law of standing happened in the middle of 
the twentieth century when the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA) was 
enacted in 1946. In an important provision, the APA provided “A person suffering 
legal wrong because of agency action, or adversely affected or aggrieved by agency 
action within the meaning of a relevant statute, is entitled to judicial review thereof.” 
5 U.S.C. § 702 (2018). The “legal wrong” prong authorized suits based on invasion of 
common law interests or invasion or disregard of interests protected by a governing 
statute. See Sunstein, Standing after Lujan, 91 Mich. L. Rev. at 181–82; id. at 182, 
n.94 (“[T]he key point is that the APA did not require an explicit grant, but instead 
inferred a cause of action (standing) from the existence of an interest that the agency 
was entitled to consider.”). The second prong, creating a statutory cause of action for 
persons “adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a 
 
prudential self-restraint by the judiciary, Congress (or the legislature) may enact a statute 
conferring standing on persons in cases the courts would otherwise decline to hear.    
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relevant statute” served to confer standing on persons as private attorneys general. 
The Court had previously interpreted an analogous provision of the Communications 
Act of 1934 to give standing to persons “only as representatives of the public interest.” 
Scripps-Howard Radio v. F.C.C., 316 U.S. 4, 14 (1942).  
¶ 44 
 
Beginning in the early 1960s, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl 
Warren, perhaps recognizing the restrictiveness of its standing decisions, applied a 
“pragmatic and functional strain” of standing doctrine. Wright & Miller, 13A Fed. 
Prac. & Proc. Juris. § 3531.1 (3d ed. 2020); See Sunstein, Standing After Lujan, 91 
Mich. L. Rev. at 183–84 ; Hessick, Standing, Injury in Fact, and Private Rights, 93 
Cornell L. Rev. at 292–93. After Frothingham and Levitt, the first Supreme Court 
decision to address standing again in detail was Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962). 
In Baker, the Supreme Court held that citizens who suffered vote dilution based on 
malapportionment had standing to sue under the Equal Protection Clause. See id. at 
207 (“A citizen’s right to a vote free of arbitrary impairment by state action has been 
judicially recognized as aright secured by the Constitution[.]”). In support of its 
holding, the Supreme Court articulated a rationale that has become a “refrain” if not 
a “shibboleth” in standing decisions, Nichol, Rethinking Standing, 72 Cal. L. Rev. at 
71, including our own: 
A federal court cannot “pronounce any statute, either of a 
state or of the United States, void, because irreconcilable 
with the constitution, except as it is called upon to adjudge 
the legal rights of litigants in actual controversies.” Have 
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the appellants alleged such a personal stake in the outcome 
of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness 
which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the 
court so largely depends for illumination of difficult 
constitutional questions? This is the gist of the question of 
standing. 
 
Baker, 369 U.S. at 205 (citation omitted) (quoting Liverpool, N.Y. & P. Steamship Co. 
v. Comm’rs of Emigration, 113 U.S. 33, 39 (1885)).  
¶ 45 
 
Notably, the Supreme Court rested its decision not on any recent standing 
case, including Frothingham or Levitt, but instead on the old principle requiring an 
“actual controversy,” or, in the Baker Court’s term, “concrete adverseness.” In 
Liverpool, N.Y. & P. Steamship, the Court noted that it would not pass upon the 
constitutionality of acts of Congress “as an abstract question” because “[t]hat is not 
the mode in which this court is accustomed or willing to consider such questions.” 
Liverpool, N.Y. & P. Steamship, 113 U.S. at 39. Although it described the requirement 
for an “actual controvers[y]” was “jurisdictional,” it reasoned that “in the exercise of 
that jurisdiction,” it is bound by rules that are essentially functional and prudential. 
See id. (holding the court is bound by rules of constitutional avoidance as “safe guides 
to sound judgment” and “[i]t is the dictate of wisdom to follow them closely and 
carefully”). 
¶ 46 
 
Besides the overarching rationale that standing is predicated on a prudential 
concern for sharpening legal issues, nowhere does the Baker opinion suggest a need 
for “injury in fact.” To the contrary, the only injury asserted is the impairment of a 
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constitutional right broadly shared and divorced from any “factual” harm experienced 
by the plaintiffs. See Winter, Metaphor, 40 Stan. L. Rev. at 1380 (describing the 
“voter’s interest in the relative weight of his or her vote” at issue in Baker as “a matter 
that is a purely legal construct dependent on one’s conceptualization of a properly 
weighted vote”). 
¶ 47 
 
Toward the end of the Warren era, the Supreme Court again addressed 
standing in the context of a taxpayer suit, attempting to resolve the dispute generated 
by Frothingham about whether the prohibition against federal taxpayer standing was 
an absolute constitutional bar or a prudential concern. In Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83 
(1968), the Court seemingly reversed course on Frothingham, and held that federal 
income taxpayers had standing to challenge the use of federal funds to support 
instructional activities and materials in religious schools. Id. at 88. In support of this 
holding, Chief Justice Warren, writing for the Court, turned toward Baker’s 
functional approach rather than Frothingham’s concern with separation of powers: 
The question whether a particular person is a proper party 
to maintain the action does not, by its own force, raise 
separation of powers problems related to improper judicial 
interference in areas committed to other branches of the 
Federal Government. Such problems arise, if at all, only 
from the substantive issues the individual seeks to have 
adjudicated. Thus, in terms of Article III limitations on 
federal court jurisdiction, the question of standing is 
related only to whether the dispute sought to be 
adjudicated will be presented in an adversary context and 
in a form historically viewed as capable of judicial 
resolution. It is for that reason that the emphasis in 
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standing problems is on whether the party invoking federal 
court jurisdiction has “a personal stake in the outcome of 
the controversy,” . . . and whether the dispute touches 
upon “the legal relations of parties having adverse legal 
interests.” 
 
Id. at 100–01 (quoting Baker, 369 U.S. at 205). After announcing these broad 
principles, the Court introduced a test to determine whether there was sufficient 
personal stake in a taxpayer standing suit by requiring “a logical nexus between the 
status asserted and the claim sought to be adjudicated.” Id. at 102. In the context of 
a taxpayer suit, the taxpayer must show the challenged statute was an exercise of 
Congress’s power to tax and spend under Article I, § 8, and, if so, that the challenged 
enactment violates specific constitutional limitations on that power. In Flast, the 
Court held the expenditures were a result of the spending power and the 
Establishment Clause specifically limited the exercise of that power. Thus, there was 
standing. In contrast, the Court held, Frothingham lacked such a nexus. 
¶ 48 
 
The “nexus test” announced in Flast has been much-criticized.33 Subsequently, 
the Court has essentially confined its scope to analysis of taxpayer standing claims 
under the taxing and spending power of Article I, § 8. For our purposes, Flast is 
relevant for cementing the ‘pragmatic and functional strain’ of Baker’s requirement 
for “concrete adverseness” and a sufficiently “personal stake in the outcome of the 
 
33 See, e.g., United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. at 182 (Powell, J., concurring) (“[I]t 
is impossible to see how an inquiry about the existence of ‘concrete adverseness’ is furthered 
by the application of the Flast test.”). 
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controversy,” and also for significantly limiting the apparently broad scope of 
Frothingham’s prohibition against federal taxpayer standing in constitutional 
litigation. 
¶ 49 
 
While Baker and Flast involved rights arising directly under the constitution, 
this era also saw an expansion in standing based on rights created by statute. There 
was, of course, general acceptance that an express conferral of standing by Congress 
created a right to sue. See McGrath, 341 U.S. at 151–53 (Frankfurter, J., concurring). 
This included private attorney general actions where the plaintiff alleged no personal 
interest of their own besides the right to sue created by the statute. See, e.g., Scripps-
Howard Radio, 316 U.S. at 14 (recognizing that Congress permits litigants “standing 
only as representatives of the public interest.”). Furthermore, the objects of 
statutes—that is, those regulated, as distinguished from the beneficiaries of such 
regulation—had standing under the APA where they had a personal interest at stake 
that was protected by the statute. See Sunstein, Standing After Lujan, 91 Mich. L. 
Rev. at 182 (“People could bring suit if they could show that ‘a relevant 
statute’ . . . granted them standing by providing that people ‘adversely affected or 
aggrieved’ were entitled to bring suit. In this way, the APA recognized that Congress 
had allowed people to have causes of action, and hence standing, even if their 
interests were not entitled to consideration by the relevant agency.” (footnote 
omitted)). In the decade following Flast courts went further, concluding that the 
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beneficiaries of regulatory programs, as well as their objects, had standing to sue to 
challenge government action—as well as administrative inaction. See id. at 183 
(citing cases from 1960 through 1975 where “courts concluded that displaced urban 
residents, listeners of radio stations, and users of the environment could proceed 
against the government to redress an agency’s legally insufficient regulatory 
protection”). The “legal interest” test, which was exemplified by Justice Frankfurter’s 
concurrence in McGrath, under which plaintiffs had standing if they suffered 
infringement of a right at common law, by statute, or under the constitution, 
McGrath, 341 U.S. at 151–53 (Frankfurter, J., concurring), was thus “read to allow 
standing for beneficiaries, who often faced statutory harm—‘legal injury’—by virtue 
of inadequate regulatory action.” Sunstein, Standing After Lujan, 91 Mich. L. Rev. at 
184; see Hardin v. Kentucky Utilities Co., 390 U.S. 1 (1968) (holding that “no explicit 
statutory provision [was] necessary to confer standing,” since the private utility 
bringing suit was “in the class which [the statute was] designed to protect”); Louis L. 
Jaffe, Standing Again, 84 Harv. L. Rev. 633, 633 (1972). 
¶ 50 
 
However, the Court did not stop with expanding the legal interest test. Nor did 
it decide that a private person could challenge any alleged violation of the public 
interest. Instead, in Association of Data Processing Service Organizations, Inc. v. 
Camp, 397 U.S. 150 (1970), the Supreme Court abandoned the legal interest test, 
distinguishing it by reasoning that it “goes to the merits,” and unanimously held for 
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the first time that a plaintiff could challenge a government action by alleging “injury 
in fact.” 397 U.S. at 152–53. The factual injury could, but need not be, economic. See 
id. at 152. In particular, the court recognized that “aesthetic, conservational, and 
recreational” interests, or even “a spiritual stake” could support standing under the 
“injury in fact” test. Id. at 154 (citations omitted); see also Gene R. Nichol, Jr., Injury 
and the Disintegration of Article III, 74 Cal. L. Rev. 1915, 1921 (1986) (identifying 
cases in which the Supreme Court subsequently recognized these injuries, as well as 
other nontraditional injuries). Plainly the injury-in-fact test was intended to expand 
standing to new categories of plaintiffs beyond that conferred by the legal interest 
test. See Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U.S. 26, 39 
(1976) (“Reduction of the threshold requirement to actual injury redressable by the 
court represented a substantial broadening of access to the federal courts over that 
previously thought to be the constitutional minimum under [the APA].”). This 
expansion soon presented problems, however. See Nichol, Rethinking Standing, 72 
Cal. L. Rev. at 75 (noting that, in some cases, injury-in-fact-test relied on injuries 
“that were not only intangible, but also subjective” and, in others, could not be 
separated from legal interests). Although Data Processing intended to expand 
standing, not restrict it, Data Processing’s injury-in-fact test paved the way for the 
restriction of standing to come. See Laurence H. Tribe, 1 American Constitutional 
Law 394 (3d ed. 2000) (“By decoupling standing from questions of substantive law, 
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the Data Processing Court sowed the initial seeds of doubt regarding Congress’ power 
to create standing where private rights were not infringed.”).  
¶ 51 
 
The attempt to expand standing under the injury-in-fact test announced in 
Data Processing and the adoption of a pragmatic and functional approach to the 
question in Baker and Flast soon gave way to doctrinal change that tightened 
standing requirements and limited access to federal courts in the Burger era. In a 
series of cases addressing constitutional challenges to legislation, the Supreme Court 
reversed course on the pragmatic approach to standing, grounding it instead in 
separation of powers—a view it had expressly rejected in the prior era. See Flast, 392 
U.S. at 100 (“[W]hether a particular person is a proper party to maintain the action 
does not, by its own force, raise separation of powers problems.”).  
¶ 52 
 
In a pair of decisions handed down the same day, the Court held there was no 
standing in a case alleging the failure to publish the CIA’s budget violated Article I, 
§ 9, or in a challenge to the ability of members of Congress to simultaneously serve 
in the Armed Forces Reserve under the incompatibility clause of Article I, § 6, cl. 2. 
United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166 (1974); Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to 
Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208 (1974). In Schlesinger, the Court held a plaintiff cannot 
rely on citizen standing if his interest is “ ‘undifferentiated’ from that of all other 
citizens.” Id. at 217. While the Court in part defended this position in terms of Baker’s 
need for a personal stake to ensure adversary presentation, the decision primarily 
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turned on separation-of-powers concerns, noting that since “every provision of the 
Constitution was meant to serve the interests of all,” and permitting standing under 
all constitutional provisions would “ha[ve] no boundaries” and ultimately “distort the 
role of the Judiciary in its relationship to the Executive and the Legislature . . . .” Id. 
at 226–27, 222. Similarly, in Richardson, the Court held there was no citizen or 
taxpayer standing to challenge legislation shielding the CIA budget from public 
disclosure under the Statement and Account Clause, U.S. Const. art. I, sec. 9, cl. 7. 
Richardson, 418 U.S. at 175. In his concurrence, Justice Powell reasoned that 
“taxpayer or citizen advocacy, given its potentially broad base, is precisely the type of 
leverage that in a democracy ought to be employed against the branches that were 
intended to be responsive to public attitudes.” Id. at 189 (Powell, J., concurring). 
Richardson, too, tightened taxpayer and citizen standing based primarily on 
separation-of-powers grounds.  Finally, in Valley Forge, the Court nevertheless found 
no standing for a taxpayer challenging the federal government transfer of public 
property to a religious institution under the Establishment Clause, distinguishing it 
from Flast on the grounds that it was executive not legislative action, thus cabining 
the conceivably broad access to taxpayer standing under Flast. Valley Forge Christian 
College v. Americans United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464 
(1982).  
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¶ 53 
 
These cases reaffirm and extend the prohibition against generalized 
grievances, making clear that “undifferentiated” or “abstract” rights under the 
constitution were not sufficient to confer standing. Moreover, the Court continued to 
change course on its earlier expansion of standing, emphasizing that the federal law 
of standing was based not primarily on functional concerns about the adversary 
presentation of the dispute, as indicated in Baker and Flast, but separation of powers, 
see Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 752 (1984), and federalism, see Los Angeles v. Lyons, 
461 U.S. 102, 112 (1983). 
E. Lujan and “Injury in Fact” to Date 
¶ 54 
 
In 1992, with an opinion written by Justice Scalia, the Supreme Court 
dramatically altered the law of standing in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 
555 (1992), when the Court held for the first time that plaintiffs had no standing to 
bring suit under a congressional statute authorizing suit because they lacked “injury 
in fact.” The plaintiffs had sued under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Section 7 
of the ESA requires the Secretary of the Interior to consult with other agencies when 
agency projects threaten the existence of endangered plants and animals. 16 U.S.C. 
§ 1536(a)(2) (2018). The Interior Department had originally construed that statute to 
apply to actions within the United States, on the high seas, or in foreign nations. 
Lujan, 504 U.S. at 558. The agency reexamined its position and ultimately issued a 
new regulation interpreting the statute to require consultation only for actions taken 
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in the United States or on the high seas, not in foreign nations. Id. at 558–59. The 
plaintiffs, wildlife conservation organizations, challenged the new regulation as 
wrongly interpreting the statute.  
¶ 55 
 
In its decision, the Court announced the test for standing that remains the law 
of standing at the federal level today, that as an “irreducible constitutional minimum” 
standing requires three elements: 
First, the plaintiff must have suffered an “injury in fact”—
an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) 
concrete and particularized and (b) “actual or imminent, 
not ‘conjectural’ or ‘hypothetical.’ ” Second, there must be a 
causal connection between the injury and the conduct 
complained of—the injury has to be “fairly . . . trace[able] 
to the challenged action of the defendant, and not . . . th[e] 
result [of] the independent action of some third party not 
before the court.” Third, it must be “likely,” as opposed to 
merely “speculative,” that the injury will be “redressed by 
a favorable decision.” 
 
Id. at 560–61 (citations omitted) (alterations in original). The Court applied this test 
and held the plaintiffs had failed to allege adequate “injury in fact.” Although the 
parties had a “cognizable interest” in “the desire to use or observe an animal species,” 
the particular plaintiffs (here, one or more of the organizations’ members) would not 
be “ ‘directly’ affected apart from their ‘ “special interest” in the subject.’ ” Id. at 563 
(citations omitted). The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals below had nevertheless held 
there was standing based upon the ESA’s “citizen-suit” provision granting “any 
person” a right to sue to enforce the statute. Id. at 571–72 (quoting 16 U.S.C. 
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§ 1540(g)). The Supreme Court rejected this rationale, however, concluding that the 
interest conferred by the statute was merely a “conferral upon all persons of an 
abstract, self-contained, noninstrumental ‘right’ ,” id. at 573, and that it was merely 
a “generalized grievance,” id. at 575. The Court summarized the generalized 
grievance caselaw including Frothingham, Levitt, Richardson, Schlesinger, and 
Valley Forge34 and applied the prohibition for the first time to bar standing for a claim 
that arose not under the Constitution, like every generalized grievance case before, 
but under a statutory cause of action created by Congress. Recognizing this novel 
path, the Court noted that “there is absolutely no basis for making the Article III 
inquiry turn on the source of the asserted right,” and to do so “would be 
discarding  . . . one of the essential elements that identifies those ‘Cases’ and 
‘Controversies’ that are the business of the courts. . . .” Id. at 576. Thus, on the basis 
of the Case or Controversy requirement, the Court held plaintiffs lacked standing to 
sue in an action to vindicate the public interest in the effective enforcement of laws 
even where Congress expressly conferred standing to sue. 
¶ 56 
 
Criticism of Lujan and the injury-in-fact requirement more broadly has been 
widespread. First, it has been criticized most harshly for its inconsistency with the 
original meaning of the case or controversy requirement of Article III and, in 
particular, the long history in England and the United States of public actions 
 
34 Although, notably, Flast was not discussed. 
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brought by private plaintiffs, including those authorized under a statute, as 
summarized above. See generally Sunstein, Standing After Lujan, 91 Mich. L. Rev. 
163; Gene R. Nichol, Jr., Justice Scalia, Standing, and Public Law Litigation, 42 
Duke L.J. 1141, 1151–53 (1993). Second, the injury-in-fact test, which was introduced 
in Data Processing to expand access to the courts, was, according to the critics, 
perversely used instead to foreclose access to the judiciary under many statutory 
“citizen-action” provisions. Third, critics argue that despite its occasional statements 
to the contrary, in turning to “injury in fact,” the Court has undermined the 
separation of powers by invading the power of the legislature to create rights. See 
Hessick, Standing, Injury in Fact, and Private Rights, 93 Cornell L. Rev. 275 at 320–-
21. Most strikingly, critics argue that the rule in Lujan could be applied to limit even 
indisputably private rights of action created by statute.35 Fifth, despite reflecting an 
attempt to objectify the law and separate standing analysis from a decision on the 
merits, the critics argue that the injury-in-fact test essentially imports assessment of 
the merits of the claim into the analysis sub rosa. Nichol, Rethinking Standing, 72 
Cal. L. Rev. at 78. Finally, the critics argue that original concerns motivating 
standing doctrine—ensuring sufficient “concrete adverseness” to ensure efficient 
 
35 See Spokeo, 136 S. Ct. at 1549, 194 L. Ed. 2d at 635 (“Congress’ role in identifying 
and elevating intangible harms does not mean that a plaintiff automatically satisfies the 
injury-in-fact requirement whenever a statute grants a person a statutory right and purports 
to authorize that person to sue to vindicate that right.”). 
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resolution of disputes—does not necessitate and is arguably impaired by the injury 
in fact requirement.36 
¶ 57 
 
In summary, the very notion of a standing requirement under Article III only 
arose in the twentieth century. For most of our nation’s history, federal law permitted 
standing for private citizens in public actions even in the absence of any 
particularized injury requirement. For most of the twentieth century, standing 
existed where there was invasion of a legal right under the common law, a statute, or 
the Constitution. The Supreme Court long emphasized a functional and pragmatic 
approach to the question of standing, focused on “concrete adverseness,” generally 
limiting this concern to constitutional questions, and significantly expanded the 
categories of claims that could support standing. However, that expansion was 
reversed, first in the context of taxpayer and citizen suits and, later with the adoption 
of an “injury in fact” requirement, which has been increasingly used to constrain 
access to federal courts even where a statute creates a right to sue. Ultimately the 
Court adopted a restrictive interpretation of injury-in-fact that applied its 
substantially tightened requirements for standing to attack the constitutionality of 
 
36 Notably, the Supreme Court has largely jettisoned Baker’s concrete adverseness 
rationale. See Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 353 n.3 (1996) (noting standing doctrine “has a 
separation of powers component, which keeps courts within certain traditional bounds vis-à-
vis the other branches, concrete adverseness or not. That is where the ‘actual injury’ 
requirement comes from”). 
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acts of the other branches based on taxpayer or citizen standing beyond that context 
to rights actually created by Congress.  
F. Standing Under North Carolina Law 
¶ 58 
 
We must now determine whether our North Carolina Constitution, specifically 
the “judicial power” provisions of Article IV, §§ 1 and 2, imposes a requirement for 
“standing,” as well as a requirement for “injury-in-fact,” to bring suit under a cause 
of action which the General Assembly has expressly created. As an initial matter, we 
have held that our Constitution, unlike the federal constitution, “is in no matter a 
grant of power. All power which is not limited by the Constitution inheres in the 
people . . . .” McIntyre v. Clarkson, 254 N.C. 510, 515 (1961) (quoting Lassiter v. 
Northampton Cty. Bd. of Elections, 248 N.C. 102, 112 (1958)). Judicial power under 
the state constitution is, therefore, plenary, and “[e]xcept as expressly limited by the 
constitution, the inherent power of the judicial branch of government continues.”37 
Beard v. North Carolina State Bar, 320 N.C. 126, 129 (1987); see generally State v. 
Lewis, 142 N.C. 626 (1906). While the federal constitution limits the federal “judicial 
Power” to certain “Cases” and “Controversies.” U.S. Const. Art. III, § 2, our 
Constitution, in contrast, has no such case or controversy limitation to the “judicial 
 
37 Other states have recognized the “plenary” nature of their judicial power under 
state constitutions. See, e.g., Couey, 357 Or. at 502, 355 P.3d at 891; Borrego v. Territory, 8 
N.M. 446, 495 (1896) (“judicial power . . . is thus vested in plenary terms”); Floyd v. Quinn, 
24 R.I. 147, 149 (1902) (“[T]he vesting of the judicial power is plenary and exclusive.”). 
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power.” Because the federal concept of standing is textually grounded in terms which 
are not present in the North Carolina Constitution, we see that the framers of the 
North Carolina Constitution did not, by their plain words, incorporate the same 
federal standing requirements. See Goldston v. State, 316 N.C. 26, 35 (2006) (holding 
North Carolina standing doctrine is “not coincident with federal standing doctrine”). 
Thus, any limitation on the judicial power in the North Carolina Constitution must 
inhere in the phrase “judicial power” itself. 
1. Does the North Carolina Constitution Impose an “Injury-in-Fact” 
Requirement Under the “Judicial Power” Provision? 
¶ 59 
 
As noted, throughout the nineteenth century, the words “judicial power” in our 
Constitution imposed no limitation on standing.  Since 1776, North Carolina law 
contemplated that the writ of mandamus and an action in the nature of the writ of 
quo warranto were available without any showing of a personal stake in the litigation, 
continuing a legacy that originated in the earliest days of the common law. Against 
this backdrop, we conclude that neither the framers of the 1776 Constitution, which 
recognized a judicial power to be kept “forever separate and distinct,” nor of the 1868 
Constitution, which originated our present “judicial power” in its own Article, 
imposed a requirement of particular injury beyond a legal right at common law, by 
statute, or under the constitution itself. The only case we have identified in the 
nineteenth century imposing a standing-type justiciability doctrine as a 
constitutional requirement was the prohibition against collusive suits. See Blake v. 
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Askew, 76 N.C. at 326 (“If they were ever valid in this State, feigned issues are 
abolished by the Constitution, Art. 4, § 1.”). 
¶ 60 
 
Concerns about standing under North Carolina law arose in the context of suits 
to enjoin legislation for violating the constitution; rather than in preventing parties 
from getting in the courthouse door, these concerns addressed what arguments 
parties may lodge once there. In St. George v. Hardie, 147 N.C. 88 (1908), for instance, 
a licensed boat pilot for hire, who was licensed by a licensing board regulating 
pilotage on the Cape Fear River, sought to pilot a boat into the river and was denied 
by the defendant, the captain of the vessel, who piloted it into and out of the river 
himself. The plaintiff sued for the fee and the defendant, on appeal, challenged the 
validity of the statute authorizing the licensing board alleging that it created a 
monopoly in violation of the emoluments and monopolies clauses of the North 
Carolina Constitution by limiting the number of pilots. This Court held the defendant 
could not present this argument because he did not lose any right of selection of pilot 
as he intended to pilot his own ship. “Nor will a court listen to an objection made to 
the constitutionality of an act by a party whose rights it does not affect, and who has, 
therefore, no interest in defeating it.” Id. at 97. Reasoning that the plaintiff was thus 
advancing the right of third parties, we noted that, as a principle of constitutional 
avoidance, we will pass upon the constitutionality of a legislative act “only in respect 
to those particulars, and as against those persons whose rights are thus 
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affected[;] . . . it is only where some person attempts to resist its operation and calls 
in the aid of its judicial power, to pronounce it void, as to him, his property, his rights, 
that the objection of unconstitutionality can be presented and sustained.” Id. at 98 
(quoting In re Wellington, 33 Mass. (16 Pick.) 87, 96 (1834)). St. George might best be 
understood as an application of the principle of jus tertii, prohibiting a party from 
raising the rights of third parties. See Holmes v. Godwin, 69 N.C. 467, 470 (1873) (“In 
general, jus tertii cannot be set up as a defence by the defendant, unless he can in 
some way connect himself with the third party.”). 
¶ 61 
 
We soon extended this principle to recognize that, in exercise of the equitable 
judicial power, a party was not entitled to injunctive relief as a matter of substantive 
law unless he would be irreparably harmed. See Newman v. Watkins, 208 N.C. 675, 
678 (1935) (“The plaintiffs sought in a court of equity to restrain an election. It was 
freely conceded upon the argument that unless the statute in question is 
unconstitutional, the plaintiffs were not entitled to the relief sought.”). This Court 
quoted a treatise which itself cited Frothingham for the principle that “[t]he party 
who invokes the power (of a court to declare an act of the legislature unconstitutional) 
must be able to show, not only that the statute is invalid, but that he has sustained 
or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury as the result of its 
enforcement, and not merely that he suffers in some indefinite way in common with 
people generally.” Id. at 676–77 (quoting Willoughby, Willoughby on the Constitution 
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of the United States (2d ed.) § 13, p. 20).38 We have consistently required a showing 
of direct injury in injunctive suits, emphasizing that this requirement is limited to 
parties seeking injunctive relief declaring laws unconstitutional. See Leonard v. 
Maxwell, 216 N.C. 89, 97 (1939), (“If others have been aggrieved [by provisions for 
which plaintiff did not allege hurt], it suffices to say the plaintiff can speak only for 
himself. In matters of constitutional challenge, he is not his brother’s keeper.” 
(emphasis added) (citing Newman v. Watkins, 208 N.C. 675 (1935)); Yarborough v. 
North Carolina Park Comm’n, 196 N.C. 284, 288 (1928) (“A party who is not 
personally injured by a statute is not permitted to assail its validity; if he is not 
injured, he should not complain because another may be hurt.”). In subsequent cases 
we have required a plaintiff to show direct injury in the two modern contexts in which 
injunctive relief remedied by declaring a law unconstitutional ordinarily arises—
actions under the Uniform Declaratory Judgment Act and challenges to zoning 
ordinances. See, e.g., American Equitable Assur. Co. of N.Y. v. Gold, 248 N.C. 288 
 
38 This Court has also cited Ex parte Levitt for a near-identical proposition. See Turner 
v. City of Reidsville, 224 N.C. 42, 47 (1944) (“It is an established principle that to entitle a 
private individual to invoke the judicial power to determine the validity of executive or 
legislative action he must show that he has sustained, or is in immediate danger of 
sustaining, a direct injury as the result of that action and it is not sufficient that he has 
merely a general interest common to all members of the public.” (quoting Ex parte Levitt, 302 
U.S. 633 (1937))). Although we have cited these federal cases for this proposition in the past, 
it does not follow that the requirement for direct injury in injunctive suits in North Carolina 
is coterminous with these federal analogues. See Goldston, 361 N.C. at 35; accord Nicholson 
v. State Ed. Assistance Authority, 275 N.C. 439, 448 (1969) (“A taxpayer, as such, may 
challenge, by suit for injunction, the constitutionality of a tax levied, or proposed to be levied, 
upon him for an illegal or unauthorized purpose.”). 
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(1958) (plaintiffs adequately alleged personal, direct injury under Uniform 
Declaratory Judgment Act); Fox v. Board of Comm’rs of Durham County, 244 N.C. 
497 (1956) (no injury alleged in challenge zoning ordinance affecting county only as 
residents and taxpayers of county).  
¶ 62 
 
The “direct injury” required in this context could be, but is not necessarily 
limited to, “deprivation of a constitutionally guaranteed personal right or an invasion 
of his property rights.” State ex rel. Summrell v. Carolina-Virginia Racing Ass’n, 239 
N.C. 591, 594 (1954); see also Canteen Services v. Johnson, Comm’r of Revenue, 256 
N.C. 155, 166 (1962) (holding only persons “who have been injuriously affected . . . in 
their persons, property or constitutional rights” may challenge constitutionality of a 
statute). Notably, unlike in federal court, taxpayer status has long served as a basis 
for challenges alleging the unconstitutional or illegal disbursement of tax funds. See 
Goldston v. State, 361 N.C. at 30–31 (citing Stratford v. City of Greensboro, 124 N.C. 
110, 111–112 (1899)). For example, we considered the standing of taxpayers to 
challenge the validity of a statute in Stanley v. Department of Conservation and 
Development, 284 N.C. 15 (1973).  There, we held that the taxpayers were injured by 
a statute that exempted property from taxation, because this “increases the burden 
imposed upon all other taxable property.”  Stanley, 284 N.C. at 29. 
¶ 63 
 
We have not yet addressed whether the requirement of a “direct injury” or, in 
other words, that a person be “adversely affected” by a statute, which we have applied 
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as a substantive requirement to entitle a plaintiff to injunctive relief, is also a 
constitutional requirement under the “judicial power” of Article IV, § 2 of our 
Constitution. This requirement is, however, founded on a longstanding concern that 
“[t]he courts never anticipate a question of constitutional law in advance of the 
necessity of deciding it.” Wood v. Braswell, 192 N.C. 588, 589 (1926). Notably in Wood, 
Chief Justice Stacy in a concurring opinion did locate this rule, along with our 
avoidance of venturing advisory opinions on constitutional questions, in Article IV, 
§ 2, reasoning that “it is only in cases calling for the exercise of judicial power that 
the courts may render harmless invalid acts of the Legislature.” Id. at 590 (Stacy, 
C.J., concurring). The majority, however, did not go that far, implicitly reserving the 
question of whether this principle arises directly from the judicial power or as a 
prudential principle of judicial self-restraint. 
¶ 64 
 
We have since clarified that the rule requiring direct injury to challenge the 
constitutionality of a statute is based on the rationale “that only one with a genuine 
grievance, one personally injured by a statute, can be trusted to battle the issue.” 
Stanley v. Department of Conservation and Development, 284 N.C. 15, 28 (1973). In 
Stanley, citing Flast approvingly for the rationale underpinning federal standing 
announced in Baker, we held 
[t]he “gist of the question of standing” is whether the party 
seeking relief has “alleged such a personal stake in the 
outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete 
adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues 
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upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of 
difficult constitutional questions.” 
 
Id. (quoting Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 99 (1968)). As in the case “in which there is 
no actual antagonistic interest between the parties, or where it appears that the 
parties are as one in interest and desire the same relief,” Bizzell, 248 N.C. at 295 
(citations omitted), we held that “[w]henever it appears that no genuine controversy 
between the parties exists, the Court will dismiss the action ex mero motu.” Stanley, 
284 N.C. at 29 (citing Bizzell, 248 N.C. 294).  
¶ 65 
 
As we have shown, the general question of standing under the North Carolina 
Constitution is motivated by a pragmatic and functional concern with ensuring 
“concrete adverseness” that “sharpens the presentation of issues” upon which we 
depend, in contrast to the federal standing doctrine which is motivated by both 
separation-of-powers and federalism concerns. We hold, therefore, that the “concrete 
adverseness” rationale undergirding our standing doctrine is grounded on prudential 
principles of self-restraint in exercise of our power of judicial review for 
constitutionality, which is itself only an incident of our exercise of the judicial power 
to determine the law in particular cases. See Bayard, 1 N.C. (Mart.) at 6–7. As this 
rationale is directly related to the circumstances under which we assert our power 
and duty to declare laws unconstitutional, it applies to challenges necessitating the 
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resolution of “constitutional questions.”39 Stanley, 284 N.C. at 28 (quoting Flast, 392 
U.S. at 99). Indeed, it is only in this context of invoking the “judicial power” to review 
the constitutionality of legislative and executive acts that the direct injury 
requirement can be understood. It therefore does not necessarily follow that our 
requirement for direct injury applies to suits not arising under the constitution, but 
instead based on common law or statutory right.40  
¶ 66 
 
We have long held that a plaintiff can maintain an action for infringement of 
a common law interest irrespective of any “actual” injury that may occur to her. For 
instance, we have not dismissed trespass actions where there is no allegation of harm 
beyond the infringement of the legal right. See Keziah v. Seaboard Air Line R. Co., 
272 N.C. 299, 311 (1968) (“Any unauthorized entry on land in the actual or 
constructive possession of another constitutes a trespass, irrespective of degree of force 
used or whether actual damages is done.” (emphasis added)); see also Hildebrand v. 
 
39 This is not the only vital question of justiciability we have recognized is a matter of 
prudential self-restraint. In In re Peoples, we recognized that while “[i]n federal the mootness 
doctrine is grounded primarily in the ‘case or controversy’ requirement of Article III, Section 
2 of the United States Constitution and has been labeled ‘jurisdictional’ by the United States 
Supreme Court . . . [i]n state courts [including North Carolina] the exclusion of moot 
questions from determination is not based on a lack of jurisdiction but rather represents a 
form of judicial restraint.” In re Peoples, 296 N.C. 109, 147 (1978). 
40 In the context of an action challenging the constitutionality of a legislative or 
executive action, we emphasize the requirement for “direct injury” or that the complaining 
party be “adversely affected” by the action does not incorporate the “injury-in-fact” 
requirement of federal law. As discussed in detail above, that test arose in 1970 in the context 
of an interpretation of a provision of the federal APA; whatever its merits as a requirement 
of the federal constitution, it has no connection to the text or history of our state 
constitutional provisions or the doctrines we have developed in accordance with them. 
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Southern Bell, 219 N.C. 402, 408 (1941) (holding landowner “is entitled to be 
protected as to that which is his without regard to its money value”). Indeed, “[s]uch 
entry entitle[s] the aggrieved party to at least nominal damages.” Keziah, 272 N.C. 
at 311. Actions for breach of contract can, in some circumstances, proceed on a theory 
of nominal damages. See, e.g., Bryan Builders Supply v. Midyette, 274 N.C. 264, 271 
(1968) (explaining that in a contract action proof of breach alone is enough to avoid 
judgment of nonsuit).  Even in a common law action where actual injury is a necessary 
element of the claim, such as negligence, the proper disposition for failure to allege 
actual injury or damages is not dismissal for lack of standing, but dismissal for failure 
to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. See, e.g, Hansley v. Jamesville & 
W.R. Co., 115 N.C. 602, 613 (1894) (“Neither negligence without damage nor damage 
without negligence will constitute any cause of action.”).41 As one commentator has 
noted, at common law, “[l]egal injuries were conceptualized in terms of the experience 
of physical injury, but the former was not confused with the latter. It is only in this 
sense that there could be a notion of damnum absque injuria—that is, damage 
without cognizable legal injury.” Winter, Metaphor, 40 Stan. L. Rev. at 1397.42 
 
41 As the Court of Appeals below noted, “[i]f EMPAC had slandered Mr. Forest in its 
political ad, Mr. Forest would have had standing to seek at least nominal damages for this 
tort, even though he won the election.” See Comm. to Elect Dan Forest, 260 N.C. App. at 7 
(citing Wolfe v. Montgomery Ward, 211 N.C. 295, 296 (1937)). 
42 One possible exception is the private action for common law public nuisance, but 
while our courts have sometimes characterized the requirement of a showing of special 
damages or invasion of a right not considered merged in the general public right in such an 
action as a requirement for “standing,” see, e.g., Neuse River Foundation, Inc. v. Smithfield 
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¶ 67 
 
We have also long held that where the Legislature has created a statutory 
cause of action, so long as the plaintiff falls in the class of persons on which the statute 
confers the right, the courts will hear her claim. As we previously noted, since the 
nineteenth century, our Court has permitted citizens to bring citizen-suits alleging 
no personal injury or interest besides the statutory grant under statutory analogues 
to the common-law prerogative writs, such as the action in the nature of a writ quo 
warranto. See Hall, 111 N.C. at 371. We continue to recognize the Legislature’s power 
to create such ‘standingless’ causes of action based upon purely ‘public’ rights. State 
ex rel. Summrell v. Carolina-Virginia Racing Association, 239 N.C. 591 (1954), 
authored by Justice (later, Chief Justice) William Bobbitt for the Court, is most 
instructive.  
¶ 68 
 
In Summrell, a plaintiff who was a resident of Currituck County sued “to 
perpetually enjoin, as a nuisance as defined by N.C.G.S. § 19-1, the defendant’s 
maintenance and use of certain premises, buildings, fixtures and machines, for the 
 
Foods, Inc., 155 N.C. App. 110, 115 (2002), dismissal for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction in 
such cases is based not on a constitutional requirement for standing or injury, but on the 
absence of any possible damages to be recovered. See Hampton v. Pulp Co., 223 N.C. 535, 544 
(1943) (“The real reason on which the rule denying individual recovery of damages [for public 
nuisances absent special damages or invasion of some right not considered merged in the 
general public right] is based—and the only one on which the policy it reflects could be 
justified—is that a purely public right is of such a nature that ordinarily an interference with 
it produces no appreciable or substantial damage.”). In such cases, the absence of special 
damages or infringement of a right precludes establishment of the private cause of action at 
all, but as discussed below, a public action for abatement of public nuisance, including one 
maintained by any “private citizen of the county,” is still available. See N.C.G.S. § 19-2.1 
(2019). 
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purpose of gambling.” Id. at 591. The defendant Racing Association was a private 
corporation granted a franchise as a result of an act of the General Assembly. 
Pursuant to that law, an election was held at which a majority of the voters 
participating voted in favor of a countywide Racing Commission. Id. To enforce its 
prohibition against the nuisances listed in § 19-1, the General Assembly chose to 
create a civil action at N.C.G.S. § 19-2, under which the plaintiff sued as relator, 
which provided as follows: 
“Any citizen of the county may maintain a civil action in 
the name of the State of North Carolina upon the relation 
of such . . . citizen, to perpetually enjoin said nuisance, the 
person or persons conducting or maintaining the same, and 
the owner or agent of the building or ground upon which 
said nuisance exists.”   
 
Id. at 594 (quoting N.C.G.S. § 19-2 (1965)). The action created by the General 
Assembly was plainly a “public action” as we discussed above—a “case[ ] in which a 
plaintiff, in some fashion or other, asserts the public’s interest rather than just his 
own—in an attempt to challenge the actions of the government or a private party.” 
Gene R. Nichol, Jr., The Impossibility of Lujan’s Project, 11 Duke Envtl. L. & Pol’y F. 
193, 194 (2001). The plaintiff’s interest, even as recognized by the statute, was no 
different than that of any other “citizen” of his county.43 It certainly could not be 
 
43 It is worth noting, though not strictly necessary to our present purposes, that the 
constitutionality of the act authorizing the commission was implicitly at issue in the claim 
because, if the act was valid, the plaintiff could not prevail on his substantive nuisance claim. 
Thus, this Court recognized, in this instance at least, that a statutory cause of action could 
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contended to be “concrete” or “particularized.” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560. Nevertheless, 
this Court reversed the trial court’s decision that it lacked “legal authority” to pass 
upon the action, holding that “the plaintiff’s action is not grounded on general 
equitable principles but on the express authority of [the statute], and he is entitled to 
injunctive relief if he can prove his allegations that the defendant is conducting and 
maintaining a gambling establishment.” Summrell, 239 N.C. at 594 (emphasis 
added). 
¶ 69 
 
Nor was Summrell the last time this Court recognized the Legislature’s power 
to create causes of action and permit a plaintiff to recover in the absence of a 
traditional injury. In Bumpers v. Community Bank, 367 N.C. 81, 88 (2013), for 
instance, we held the General Assembly had authority to prohibit unfair and 
deceptive trade practices and to create a private cause of action in favor of a class of 
individuals to enforce this prohibition. In order to come within the class of persons 
protected by the statute the plaintiff must have been “injured by reason of any act or 
thing done by any other person, firm or corporation in violation of the provisions of 
this Chapter,” N.C.G.S. § 75-16 (2011); however, “[t]his statute is broader and covers 
more than traditional common law proscriptions on tortious conduct, though fraud 
 
provide a basis for judicial review of the constitutionality of a legislative act where there was 
effectively no citizen standing, on the basis that the action was not grounded on equity, but 
statute. This bolsters our conclusion that standing is a prudential, not purely constitutional, 
restraint on this Court’s exercise of the “judicial power.” 
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and deceit tend to be included within its ambit.” Bumpers, 367 N.C. at 88. Thus, 
North Carolina’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act expanded the injury for 
which a plaintiff could recover beyond the common law and the question of the 
plaintiff’s standing was not even raised. 
¶ 70 
 
In Addison v. Britt, 83 N.C. App. 418 (1986), a case involving the federal Truth 
in Lending Act, our Court of Appeals concluded that “[o]nce a violation of an 
actionable portion of the [Truth in Lending Act] is established, the debtor is entitled 
to recover statutory damages [and that b]ecause the purpose of that section is to 
encourage private enforcement of the Act, proof of actual damages is unnecessary.” 
Id. at 421 (emphasis added). Thus, the civil action under the Truth in Lending Act 
reflects a “private attorney general” action, in the sense that Congress, to promote 
the purposes of the Act, has empowered private individuals to sue to vindicate the 
public interest and to recover based on the statutory damage formula, regardless of 
the damages actually accumulated. Furthermore, the Act did not require “that the 
debtors have been misled or deceived in any way.” Id. Thus, the Act authorized “any 
person [who] is liable to such [creditor failing to comply with the Act]” to recover 
under the Act, irrespective of actual injury resulting from infringement of the Act. 
See 15 U.S.C. § 1640(a) (1982). 
¶ 71 
 
In summary, our courts have recognized the broad authority of the legislature 
to create causes of action, such as “citizen-suits” and “private attorney general 
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actions,” even where personal, factual injury did not previously exist, in order to 
vindicate the public interest. In such cases, the relevant questions are only whether 
the plaintiff has shown a relevant statute confers a cause of action and whether the 
plaintiff satisfies the requirements to bring a claim under the statute. There is no 
further constitutional requirement because the issue does not implicate the concerns 
that motivate our standing doctrine. See, e.g., Stanley, 284 N.C. at 28. The existence 
of the legal right is enough. 
¶ 72 
 
Having surveyed the relevant English, American, and North Carolina law of 
standing, we are finally in a position to determine whether, as EMPAC and the 
dissent below argue, the North Carolina Constitution imposes an “injury-in-fact” 
requirement, as under the federal constitution. While our Court of Appeals has 
previously come to that conclusion, which was followed by numerous panels of that 
court, see, e.g., Neuse River Foundation, Inc. v. Smithfield Foods, Inc., 155 N.C. App. 
110, 113–15 (2002) (holding North Carolina law requires “injury in fact” for standing 
and applying Lujan), we are not bound by those decisions and conclude our 
Constitution does not include such a requirement.  
¶ 73 
 
First, the federal injury-in-fact requirement has no place in the text or history 
of our Constitution. Our Constitution includes no case-or-controversy requirement, 
upon which the federal injury-in-fact requirement is based. Rather, as discussed 
above, the “judicial power” provision of our Constitution imposes no particular 
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requirement regarding “standing” at all. Rather, as a rule of prudential self-restraint, 
we have held that, in order to assure the requisite “concrete adverseness” to address 
“difficult constitutional questions,” we have required a plaintiff to allege “direct 
injury” to invoke the judicial power to pass on the constitutionality of a legislative or 
executive act. See Stanley, 284 N.C. at 28. This standing principle arises as an 
incident of our power and duty to determine whether executive or legislative acts 
violate the constitution in the resolution of actual controversies. However, where a 
purely statutory or common law right is at issue, this rationale is not implicated, and 
a showing of direct injury beyond the impairment of the common law or statutory 
right is not required. 
¶ 74 
 
Second, the injury-in-fact standard is inconsistent with the caselaw of this 
Court. To be sure, our own decisions have not always maintained these distinctions 
with exactitude—or avoided the doctrinal encumbrances which have attached to the 
“slogans and litanies” of standing decisions as barnacles to the hull. Nichol, 
Rethinking Standing, 72 Cal. L. Rev. at 71. Dunn v. Pate, 334 N.C. 115 (1993), 
provides a particularly instructive example. In that case, we held defendants seeking 
to avoid having a 1962 deed set aside for failure to comply with a statute in effect at 
the time, which required the clerk of court to make a private examination of a wife 
whenever she and her husband entered into a contract to ensure the conveyance was 
neither unreasonable nor injurious to the wife, had standing to challenge the statute 
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as unconstitutional when the conveyance at issue apparently did not comply with the 
allegedly discriminatory (and since-repealed) statutory requirement. Id. at 117. On 
the way to holding the defendants in question had standing to attack the 
constitutionality of the private examination statute, however, we partially overruled 
a prior Court of Appeals decision while noting the court “correctly stated that the 
petitioner ‘must allege she has sustained an “injury in fact” as a direct result of the 
statute to have standing.’ ” Id. at 119 (quoting Murphy v. Davis, 61 N.C. App. 597, 
600, cert. denied & appeal dismissed, 309 N.C. 192 (1983)). The Court of Appeals 
decision, Murphy, which we had approved of in this respect had cited Article III, § 1 
of the U.S. Constitution, Baker, and a case of this Court that itself precisely quoted 
the standard we discussed above in Stanley that was derived from Baker via Flast. 
However, the proposition in Murphy for which these sources were cited was entirely 
different: that “Petitioner must allege she has sustained an ‘injury in fact’ as a direct 
result of the statute to have standing to challenge the statute as violating either the 
federal or the North Carolina constitutions.” Murphy, 61 N.C. App. at 600.  Notably, 
none of the sources cited in Murphy included the language “injury in fact” and, as 
discussed in detail above, stand for entirely different propositions. Moreover, this 
Court in Dunn did not itself rely on the federal “injury in fact” standard—throughout 
the opinion we cited North Carolina caselaw and nowhere cited Lujan or Data 
Processing, from which that language originates. Instead, we relied upon the familiar 
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principle that, in a challenge to the constitutionality of a statute, a party has standing 
if they have been “injuriously affected . . . in their . . . property . . . .” See Dunn, 334 
N.C. at 119 (quoting Canteen Service, 256 N.C. at 166). Nevertheless, the Court of 
Appeals and litigants have taken this apparent approval of an unsupported reference 
to “injury in fact” in Dunn and concluded we intended to incorporate federal standing 
requirements into North Carolina law. See, e.g., Neuse River Foundation, 155 N.C. 
App. at 114 (“Standing most often turns on whether the party has alleged ‘injury in 
fact’ in light of the applicable statutes or caselaw.” (citing, inter alia, Dunn, 334 N.C. 
at 119)); Coker v. DaimlerChrysler Corp., 172 N.C. App. 386, 390–92 (2005) (applying 
Neuse River Foundation’s adoption of Lujan’s standing requirements to hold plaintiff 
under UDTPA had not shown “injury in fact” to support standing). We conclude 
otherwise.44 
¶ 75 
 
The Court of Appeals’ misapplication of our standing requirements in Neuse 
River Foundation was also based on our opinion in Empire Power Co. v. North 
Carolina Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources (DEHNR), 337 
N.C. 569 (1994). This case is particularly instructive, because it demonstrates how 
words can assume unintended meanings in the arena of standing. Empire Power Co. 
involved a challenge brought under the North Carolina Administrative Procedure Act 
 
44 To the extent the Court of Appeals’ opinion in Neuse River Foundation, Inc. v. 
Smithfield Foods, Inc., 155 N.C. App. 110 (2002), is at odds with this opinion, we disavow it.  
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(NCAPA), N.C.G.S. §§ 150B-1, et seq. (1991), and the Air Pollution Control Act 
(APCA), N.C.G.S. §§ 143-215.105, et seq. (1993), appealing a decision of DEHNR 
granting an air pollution control permit to a power company to the Office of 
Administrative Hearings (OAH). Empire Power Co., 337 N.C. at 572. The petitioner 
alleged DEHNR had violated its statutory duty to reduce air pollution under the 
APCA by giving the power company a permit without addressing comments filed by 
another power company. Id. at 572. The Court of Appeals concluded, and the power 
company and DEHNR both argued before this Court, that the petitioner was not an 
“aggrieved person” within the meaning of the NCAPA because the NCAPA cannot 
confer a right to an administrative hearing in the OAH and that such a right must be 
set forth in the organic statute at issue (there, the APCA). Id. at 574. This Court 
reversed, holding that the petitioner had shown that he was a “person aggrieved” 
under the NCAPA and thus “entitled to an administrative hearing to determine [his] 
rights, duties, or privileges.” Id. at 588 (quoting N.C.G.S. § 150B-23(a) (1991)). We 
noted that, under the NCAPA, “ ‘Person aggrieved’ means any person or group of 
persons of common interest directly or indirectly affected substantially in his or its 
person, property, or employment, by an administrative decision,” Id. at 588 (quoting 
N.C.G.S. § 150B-2(6)), and held that the petitioner had established he was a “person 
aggrieved” because he lived downwind of the permitted station and “alleged sufficient 
injury in fact to interests within the zone of those to be protected and regulated by the 
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statute [(the APCA)], and rules and standards promulgated thereto, the substantive 
and procedural requirements of which he asserts the agency violated when it issued 
the permit.” Id. at 589 (emphasis added). This passing use of the phrase “injury in 
fact” was not in reference to any requirement of standing under the North Carolina 
Constitution, but whether the plaintiff had injuries to interests that fall within the 
zone of interests protected by the underlying statute such that the plaintiff was in 
the class of those “persons aggrieved” for whom the NCAPA conferred a right to an 
administrative decision.  
2. Does the Remedy Clause of the North Carolina Constitution Impose 
an “Injury-in-Fact” Requirement? 
¶ 76 
 
Finally, it might nevertheless be argued that the remedy clause of the North 
Carolina Constitution imposes a factual injury requirement for standing. In this case, 
the Court of Appeals, including both the majority and the dissent below, relied on our 
statement in Mangum v. Raleigh Board of Adjustment, 362 N.C. 640 (2008), to hold 
the North Carolina Constitution imposes an injury in fact requirement before a 
plaintiff may have standing.45 See Comm. to Elect Dan Forest, 260 N.C. App. at 6 
 
45 As an initial matter, we note that we did not impose a constitutional requirement 
of “injury-in-fact” in Mangum; rather, we held only that, where a petitioner files an action in 
the nature of certiorari to challenge a quasi-judicial decision under a zoning ordinance based 
on standing conferred under 160A-393(d)(2) (2019) (recodified at N.C.G.S. § 160D-1402(c)(2)), 
the petitioner must have alleged “special damages” to maintain the action and the allegations 
of the petitioner there were sufficient in that regard. See Mangum, 362 N.C. at 644; accord 
N.C.G.S. § 160D-1402(c)(2) (Supp. 2 2020) (“The following persons shall have standing to file 
a petition under this section: . . . Any other person who will suffer special damages as the 
result of the decision being appealed.”). The requirement for special damages to have 
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(“According to our Supreme Court, ‘[t]he North Carolina Constitution confers 
standing on those who suffer harm[,]’ and that one must have suffered some ‘injury 
in fact’ to have standing to sue.” (citing first Mangum, 362 N.C. at 642; and then 
Dunn, 334 N.C. at 119); Id. at 13 (McGee, C.J., dissenting) (“ ‘As a general matter, 
the North Carolina Constitution confers standing on those who suffer harm[.]’ 
Therefore, the North Carolina Constitution does not confer standing on those who 
have not suffered harm.” (emphasis in original) (citations omitted)). In Mangum, we 
stated “The North Carolina Constitution confers standing on those who suffer harm: 
‘All courts shall be open; [and] every person for an injury done him in his lands, goods, 
person, or reputation shall have remedy by due course of law . . . .” Mangum, 362 N.C. 
at 642 (quoting N.C. Const. Art. I, § 18). While our statement in Mangum was an 
adequate summary of the remedy clause’s effect on questions of standing—that the 
provision “confers standing on those who suffer harm”—it does not follow that the 
those who do not suffer “harm” lack “standing.” In terms of logic, “harm” is a sufficient 
but not a necessary condition for “standing.” Much recent difficulty has arisen 
because of our use of the term “harm.” Of course, the remedy clause does not speak 
in terms of “harm” but “injury,” and we turn to the text and history to discern its 
meaning.  
 
standing to sue in such cases arises from the requirements of the statute which creates and 
confers the cause of action on certain persons, not the constitution.  
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¶ 77 
 
Article I, section 18 of the North Carolina Constitution provides: 
All courts shall be open; every person for an injury done him 
in his lands, goods, person, or reputation shall have remedy 
by due course of law; and right and justice shall be 
administered without favor, denial, or delay. 
N.C. Const. art. I, § 18 (emphasis added). This provision has ancient roots in English 
and American law. Our most contemporary treatise on the North Carolina 
Constitution identifies the protean origins of Article I, § 18 as a principle in Magna 
Carta: “ ‘Nulli vendemus nulli negabimus aut differemus rectum vel justitiam.’ (‘To 
no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.’)” John V. Orth 
and Paul Martin Newby, The North Carolina State Constitution 65 (2d ed. 2013) 
(quoting Magna Carta, § 40 (1215)). The second clause of the open courts provision, 
commonly termed a “remedy clause,” stemmed not from the text of Magna Carta, § 40 
itself, but from Lord Edward Coke’s influential commentaries on the provision in his 
Institutes of the Laws of England. See Orth and Newby, The North Carolina State 
Constitution 66 (noting that Lord Coke’s commentaries pointed out that “[o]pen 
courts were not enough . . . ; they had to be righting wrongs and doing justice”); see 
generally David Schuman, The Right to a Remedy, 65 Temp. L. Rev. 1197 (1992) 
(describing the origin, history, and interpretation of remedy clauses). Lord Coke 
reasoned that, by implication, Magna Carta necessitated more than merely “open” 
courts: “And therefore every Subject of the Realm, for injury done to him in bonis, 
terries, vel persona [goods, lands, or person] . . . may take his remedy by the course of 
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the Law . . . .” Orth and Newby, The North Carolina State Constitution 66 (quoting 
Edward Coke, Institutes of the Laws of England (London: Society of Stationers, 1641), 
vol. 2, 55–56).  
¶ 78 
 
Prior to Mangum, we had never construed this provision to implicate standing. 
Rather, we have focused on whether the legislature may restrain the remedies 
available in certain ways. For instance, we have held the remedy clause of the open 
courts provision permitted the legislature to abolish punitive damages for a libeled 
plaintiff if a timely retraction was printed, however, we stated in dicta that abolishing 
compensatory damages would have violated the clause. Osborn v. Leach, 135 N.C. 
628, 639–40 (1904). Moreover, we have held the legislature does not violate the clause 
by instituting a statute of repose, because the “the remedy constitutionally 
guaranteed must be one that is legally cognizable,” and “[t]he legislature has the 
power to define the circumstances under which a remedy is legally cognizable and 
those under which it is not.” Lamb v. Wedgewood S. Corp., 308 N.C. 419, 444 (1983).46 
¶ 79 
 
How the remedy clause interacts with standing presents another question. 
This question turns not on what “remedy” is guaranteed, but what the term “injury” 
means in the phrase so as to entitle a plaintiff to a remedy. Although the provision in 
its present incarnation was first incorporated into the Declaration of Rights as Article 
 
46 In Lamb, we expressly reserved the question whether “the legislature may 
constitutionally abolish altogether a common law cause of action.” Id. at 444. 
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I, § 35 at the 1868 Constitutional Convention, it was not discussed in the records of 
Convention. See Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of North 
Carolina (Raleigh, Joseph W. Holden, 1868). While we cannot infer the intent of the 
framers from this silent record, commentators have noted “the enactment of these 
provisions was generally motivated by concerns that the legislature, and sometimes 
even the courts, might block access to justice. Thus, rather than restricting legislative 
conferrals [of standing], if anything, they suggest a constitutional mood favorable to 
broad access to the courts.”  James W. Doggett, “Trickle Down” Constitutional 
Interpretation: Should Federal Limits on Legislative Conferral of Standing be 
Imported into State Constitutional Law?, 108 Col. L. Rev. 839, 878 (2008) (note) 
(footnotes omitted). Acknowledging this background, we nevertheless must interpret 
our open courts provision based on contemporaneous understandings and the 
common law background, which, as we have seen, continued to inform lawmakers 
well into the nineteenth century.  
¶ 80 
 
The concept of “injury” to which Lord Coke referred in his Institutes and which 
pervaded the common law of England and in America is entirely distinct from the 
concept of “injury in fact” in modern caselaw, encompassing “injuries” which did not 
include factual harm. For instance, in his own Commentaries, Blackstone recognized 
the writs of mandamus and prohibition, discussed in detail above, “redressed the 
legal injuries of ‘refusal or neglect of justice’ and ‘encroachment of jurisdiction,’ 
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respectively.” Winter, Metaphor, 40 Stan. L. Rev. at 1397 (quoting 3 William 
Blackstone, Commentaries *111).47 
The term ‘injury’ referred to ‘any infringement of the rights 
of another . . . for which an action lies at law.’ Legal 
injuries were conceptualized in terms of the experience of 
physical injury, but the former was not confused with the 
latter. It is only in this sense that there could be a notion 
of damnum absque injuria—that is, damage without 
cognizable legal injury. 
 
Id. (footnotes omitted) (quoting 1 W. Jowitt, The Dictionary of English Law 977 (2d 
ed. 1977)). As Professor Hessick has noted, 
[f]actual injury (damnum) alone was not sufficient to 
warrant judicial intervention; rather, a person could 
maintain a cause of action only if he suffered a legal injury, 
that is, the violation of a legal right (injuria). A factual 
harm without a legal injury was damnum absque injuria, 
and provided no basis for relief. 
 
Hessick, Standing, Injury in Fact, and Private Rights, 93 Cornell L. Rev. at 280–81 
(citing 1 Theodore Sedgwick, A Treatise on the Measure of Damages § 32, at 28 (Arthur 
G. Sedgwick and Joseph H. Beale eds., 9th ed. 1920)). However, while damnum 
absque injuria (factual harm without legal injury) was insufficient at common law, 
injuria sine damno (legal injury without factual harm) sufficed. As Professor Hessick 
recounts, the seminal case of Ashby v. White, 2 Ld. Raym. 938, 92 Eng. Rep. 126, 
 
47 As Professor Winter notes, “if Blackstone’s definitions of these ‘injuries’ sound 
strange to modern ears, it is because today’s jurisprudence treats ‘injury-in-fact’ in literalist 
terms. But the common law usage of the term ‘injury’ was plainly metaphoric.” Id. at 1397. 
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(1702) (Holt, C.J., dissenting), rev'd, 3 Salk. 17, 91 Eng. Rep. 665, would ultimately 
resolve this question: 
The distinction between actions on for trespass [(which did 
not require factual harm)] and actions on the case [(which 
initially did)] began to collapse in the early eighteenth 
century as courts became resistant to denying relief to 
plaintiffs whose rights had been violated but who could not 
demonstrate harm. In the English case Ashby v. White, 
Chief Justice Holt rejected the notion that a plaintiff could 
not maintain an action on the case arising from the 
violation of a right if he suffered no harm. He explained 
that “[i]f the plaintiff has a right, he must of necessity have 
a means to vindicate and maintain it, and a remedy if he is 
injured in the exercise or enjoyment of it; and indeed it is a 
vain thing to imagine a right without a remedy; for want of 
right and want of remedy are reciprocal.” Responding to 
the argument that an action on the case was “not 
maintainable because here is no hurt or damage to the 
plaintiff,” Chief Justice Holt argued that “surely every 
injury imports a damage, though it does not cost the party 
one farthing, and it is impossible to prove the contrary; for 
a damage is not merely pecuniary, but an injury imports a 
damage, when a man is thereby hindered of his right.” 
Regardless of the type of action, the violation of the right 
was what mattered. 
  
Hessick, Standing, Injury in Fact, and Private Rights, 93 Cornell L. Rev. at 281–82 
(footnotes omitted).48 The validity of Justice Holt’s views in Ashby has been affirmed 
by this Court as a matter of North Carolina common law. See, e.g., Eller v. Carolina 
 
48 “Although Chief Justice Holt’s opinion was in dissent, his judgment prevailed on 
appeal in the House of Lords. By the nineteenth century, both England and the United States 
regarded Chief Justice Holt’s view as correctly stating the law.” Hessick, Standing, Injury in 
Fact, and Private Rights, 93 Cornell L. Rev. at 282–83 (footnotes omitted).  
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& W Ry. Co., 140 N.C. 140, 142 (1905) (“Plaintiff may recover what we call nominal 
damages, which are really no pecuniary compensation, but which merely ascertain or 
fix his right or cause of action. Lord Holt has well said: ‘Surely every injury imports 
a damage, though it does not cost the party one farthing, and it is impossible to prove 
the contrary; for a damage is not merely pecuniary, but an injury imports a damage 
when a man is thereby hindered of his right.’ ” (quoting Ashby, 2 Ld. Raymd. at 
938)).49  
¶ 81 
 
Therefore, the word “injury” in the remedy clause of our Constitution’s open 
courts provision, derived from the common-law concept of “injuria,” means, at a 
minimum, the infringement of a legal right; not necessarily “injury in fact” or factual 
harm, derived from the contrary concept of “damnum.” Taking the remedy clause as 
a whole and in the context of this history, it cannot be understood to impose a 
limitation on the power of the courts to hear a claim, under the “injury in fact” test 
or otherwise.50 For the same reason, the remedy clause cannot be understood to 
 
49 Lord Holt’s rule in Ashby was well-established in North Carolina by 1855, prior to 
the 1868 Convention. See, e.g., Bond v. Hilton, 47 N.C. (2 Jones) 149, 150–51 (1855) (per 
curiam) (“Wherever there is a breach of an agreement, or the invasion of a right, the law 
infers some damage, and if no evidence is given of any particular amount of loss, it gives 
nominal damages, by way of declaring the right, upon the maxim, ubi jus ibi remedium.” 
(citing Ashby v. White, 1st Salk. 19)). 
50 Thirty-nine state constitutions have remedy clause provisions identical or similar 
to ours. See Schuman, The Right to a Remedy, 65 Temp. L. Rev. at 1201–02 (identifying these 
provisions). The only state we have identified that construes the remedy clause of its open 
courts provision to impose a standing requirement is Texas, where our sister supreme court 
has held that “[u]nder the Texas Constitution, standing is implicit in the open courts 
provision, which contemplates access to the courts only for those litigants suffering an 
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impose a limitation on the legislature’s power to create new legal rights. To the 
contrary, by its express terms, which provide that “every person for an injury done 
him . . . shall have remedy by due course of law,” to the extent it implicates the 
doctrine of standing, our remedy clause should be understood as guaranteeing 
standing to sue in our courts where a legal right at common law, by statute, or arising 
under the North Carolina Constitution has been infringed. N.C. Const. Art. I, § 18, 
cl. 2 (emphasis added). 
G. The Law of Standing in North Carolina Summarized 
¶ 82 
 
In summary, the “judicial power” under the North Carolina Constitution is 
plenary, and “[e]xcept as expressly limited by the constitution, the inherent power of 
the judicial branch of government continues.” Beard v. North Carolina State Bar, 320 
N.C. 126, 129 (1987). As an exercise of the judicial power entrusted in us by the people 
of North Carolina in our Constitution, we have the power and duty to determine the 
law in particular cases and, as a necessary incident of that duty, the power to conduct 
judicial review of executive and legislative actions for constitutionality when 
necessary to resolve a case. Bayard, 1 N.C. (Mart.) at 6–7. We have held that, in 
directly attacking the validity of a statute under the constitution, a party must show 
 
injury,” and has applied the standing principle of federal law, including Lujan. Texas Ass’n 
of Business v. Texas Air Control Bd., 852 S.W.2d 440, 444 (1993); see id. at 445 (citing Lujan, 
504 U.S. 555). We are not persuaded by its reasoning. See Doggett, “Trickle Down” 
Constitutional Interpretation, 108 Col. L. Rev. at 878 (cautioning against adopting the Texas 
approach because it conflicts with the purposes underlying the adoption of open court 
provisions). 
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they suffered a “direct injury.” Summrell, 239 N.C. at 594; see also Stanley, 284 N.C. 
at 28 (holding party must be “personally injured” to attack validity of statute). The 
personal or “direct injury” required in this context could be, but is not necessarily 
limited to, “deprivation of a constitutionally guaranteed personal right or an invasion 
of his property rights.” Summrell, 239 N.C. at 594; see also Canteen Services, 256 N.C. 
at 166 (holding only persons “who have been injuriously affected . . . in their persons, 
property or constitutional rights” may challenge constitutionality of a statute). The 
direct injury requirement applicable in cases involving constitutional challenges to 
the validity of government action is a rule of prudential self-restraint based on 
functional concern for assuring sufficient “concrete adverseness” to address “difficult 
constitutional questions”: 
“ ‘[t]he “gist of the question of standing” is whether the 
party seeking relief has “alleged such a personal stake in 
the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete 
adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues 
upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of 
difficult constitutional questions.’ ” 
 
Goldston, 361 N.C. at 30 (quoting Stanley, 284 N.C. at 28 (quoting Flast v. Cohen, 392 
U.S. 83, 99 (1968))). When a person alleges the infringement of a legal right arising 
under a cause of action at common law, a statute, or the North Carolina Constitution, 
however, the legal injury itself gives rise to standing. The North Carolina 
Constitution confers standing to sue in our courts on those who suffer the 
infringement of a legal right, because “every person for an injury done him in his 
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lands, goods, person, or reputation shall have remedy by due course of law.” N.C. 
Const. art. I, § 18, cl. 2. Thus, when the legislature exercises its power to create a 
cause of action under a statute, even where a plaintiff has no factual injury and the 
action is solely in the public interest, the plaintiff has standing to vindicate the legal 
right so long as he is in the class of persons on whom the statute confers a cause of 
action.51 
H. Standing under the Disclosure Statute 
¶ 83 
 
Having followed the tortuous track through the thorny thicket of standing that 
brought us here, applying the law is simple. The Committee has alleged EMPAC 
violated the requirements of the Disclosure Statute. Part of the Disclosure Statute 
creates a cause of action permitting the candidate targeted by the illegal ad to enforce 
the regulations by bringing suit and establishing statutory damages he can seek. This 
provision is one of many where our General Assembly has provided for such private 
 
51 Showing a party falls within the class of persons on whom the statute confers a 
cause of action may require a showing of some special injury depending on the statutory 
terms. For instance, our zoning statutes confer standing to maintain a cause of action in the 
nature of certiorari appealing a quasi-judicial zoning action on certain classes of persons, 
including “person[s] who will suffer special damages as the result of the decision being 
appealed.” N.C.G.S. § 160D-1402(c)(2) (Supp. 2 2020); see Mangum, 362 N.C. at 644. In 
certain cases, a cause of action may be implied from the statutory scheme. For example, to 
be entitled to administrative hearing under the NCAPA, a petitioner must show they are a 
“party aggrieved” by agency action, but where the underlying organic statute does not 
expressly create a right to a hearing, we have nevertheless held that those who “alleged 
sufficient injury in fact to interests within the zone of those to be protected and regulated by 
the [underlying] statute,” would have a right to an administrative hearing under the NCAPA 
as a “person aggrieved.” Empire Power Co., 337 N.C. at 589. 
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enforcement. The record indicates the Committee has complied with the 
requirements of the Disclosure Statute.52 
¶ 84 
 
The Committee clearly falls under the class of persons on whom the Disclosure 
Statute confers a cause of action. Mr. Forest was the candidate against whom the ad 
below was run. He has assigned his interest in the case to his Committee. EMPAC 
contends that the Committee lacks standing because it cannot show “injury in fact” 
under Lujan. But, as discussed above, that is not the law of North Carolina. Under 
North Carolina law, the legislature may create causes of action, including “private 
attorney general actions” to vindicate even a purely public harm. Our requirement 
for a “direct injury” in cases where the plaintiff attacks the validity of a statute under 
the constitution does not apply here. Where the plaintiff has suffered infringement of 
a legal right arising under a statute that confers on a class of persons including the 
plaintiff a cause of action, and the plaintiff has satisfied the requirements of the 
statute, the plaintiff has shown standing under the North Carolina Constitution. 
Here, the Committee has standing based on the statutory cause of action created by 
the Disclosure Statute.  
IV. 
Conclusion 
 
52 EMPAC and the dissent below argued that the Committee did not comply with the 
“condition precedent” of the Disclosure Statute. We disagree and hold the Committee has 
satisfied this condition precedent for the reasons stated in the majority opinion below. 
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¶ 85 
 
The doctrine of standing in federal courts, including the “injury-in-fact” 
requirement, arises under the case-or-controversy provisions of the United States 
Constitution, by which exercise of the federal judicial power is limited. The North 
Carolina Constitution, by contrast, contains no analogous provision. Rather, in the 
context of standing, our “judicial power” is limited by principles of self-restraint 
requiring a “direct injury” when attacking the validity of a statute under the 
constitution. When a person alleges the infringement of a legal right directly under a 
cause of action at common law, a statute, or the North Carolina Constitution, 
however, the legal injury itself gives rise to standing. The North Carolina 
Constitution confers standing to sue in our courts on those who suffer the 
infringement of a legal right, because “every person for an injury done him in his 
lands, goods, person, or reputation shall have remedy by due course of law.” N.C. 
Const. art. I, § 18, cl. 2. 
AFFIRMED IN PART; DISRECTIONARY REVIEW IMPROVIDENTLY 
ALLOWED IN PART.53 
Justices BERGER and BARRINGER did not participate in the consideration 
or decision of this case. 
 
53 We originally granted EMPAC’s petition for discretionary review on the 
constitutionality of the Disclosure Statute. We decline to address that issue here. 
 
 
Chief Justice NEWBY concurring in the result. 
 
¶ 86 
 
I agree with the result reached by the majority. Nonetheless, I write separately 
because I differ in the rationale. A system of fair elections is foundational to self-
government. Our state constitution acknowledges this principle and allows the 
General Assembly broad authority to enact laws to protect the integrity of elections 
and thus encourage public trust and confidence in the election process. Under that 
authority, the General Assembly enacted a “stand by your ad” law in 1999, requiring 
political ads to contain particular information it deemed necessary to inform the 
public of the ad sponsor. A nonconforming ad provides inadequate information, thus 
harming the public generally and an affected candidate specifically. Part of that 
statute allowed a candidate affected by the illegal ad to enforce the regulations by 
bringing suit and established statutory damages he or she could seek. This provision 
is one of many where our General Assembly has provided for such private 
enforcement.  
¶ 87 
 
Misinformation harms the public, particularly when the misinformation 
concerns candidates for elected office. Indeed, the North Carolina Constitution 
recognizes the people’s right to free elections, N.C. Const. art. I, § 10, which means 
that elections must be free from “interference,” John V. Orth & Paul Martin Newby, 
The North Carolina State Constitution 56 (2d ed. 2013). The General Assembly, under 
its constitutional mandate to protect fair play in elections, addressed the generally 
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recognized threat that improper advertising poses to that goal. See, e.g., Citizens 
United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310, 371, 130 S. Ct. 876, 916, 175 L. Ed. 2d 753, 802 (2010) 
(explaining that “disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech 
of corporate entities in a proper way,” and “[t]his transparency enables the electorate 
to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and 
messages”); Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 66–68, 96 S. Ct. 612, 657–58, 46 L. Ed. 2d 
659, 714–15 (1976) (describing the various reasons the government has a significant 
interest in ensuring that the public is well informed on matters related to 
campaigning and political candidates). 
¶ 88 
 
Some states may address this problem through criminal punishment or civil 
penalty for intentional violations of disclosure laws. See Friends of Joe Sam Queen v. 
Ralph Hise for N.C. Senate, 223 N.C. App. 395, 403 n.7, 735 S.E.2d 229, 235 n.7 (2012) 
(explaining the approaches to enforcement various states have taken). The General 
Assembly chose a different enforcement mechanism. By allowing actions by those 
candidates who have been affected by unlawful ads, the General Assembly sought to 
meaningfully secure a vital public interest and grant a specific legal path for the 
injured candidate to address the wrong. See N.C. Const. art. I, § 18. The General 
Assembly perhaps recognized that it is difficult to monitor all campaign ads, that the 
public is harmed even by unintentional misinformation, and that the affected 
candidate has the greatest incentive to pursue a remedy for illegal ads. 
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Newby, C.J., concurring in the result 
 
 
 
 
¶ 89 
 
Specifically, the General Assembly provided that when any entity creates a 
political campaign ad that violates certain disclosure requirements, the candidate 
affected by the unlawful ad “shall have a monetary remedy in a civil action against” 
the violator. N.C.G.S. § 163-278.39A(f) (2011) (emphasis added) (repealed 2014). The 
injuries to the public, to the election process, and to the individual candidate are hard 
to quantify: what is the monetary value of misleading information that may affect an 
election? The General Assembly thus provided for statutory damages. That monetary 
remedy is, according to the statute, equal to the amount the violating party spent to 
broadcast the unlawful ad. N.C.G.S. § 163-278.39A(f)(2). Only those candidates who 
have not violated any of the statutory provisions themselves may sue. N.C.G.S. 
§ 163-278.39A(f). The candidate must file a notice of the complaint with the Board of 
Elections by the Friday following Election Tuesday. N.C.G.S. § 163-278.39A(f)(1). By 
the language of the statute, the General Assembly has decided that a candidate who 
complies with these requirements and shows a violation is entitled to statutory 
damages. 
¶ 90 
 
Plaintiff here has complied with all the statutory requirements. First, there is 
no evidence that plaintiff has violated any disclosure requirement; plaintiff has clean 
hands, as the General Assembly required. Next, both defendant and the Board of 
Elections received notice of the violation within the statutory period. Thus, sufficient 
evidence exists to show that plaintiff complied with any condition precedent to suing. 
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Newby, C.J., concurring in the result 
 
 
 
 
There is no dispute that plaintiff’s complaint precisely tracks the requirements of the 
statute.  
¶ 91 
 
The only remaining question, then, is whether subsection 163-278.39A(f) is 
enforceable as written; in other words, is the statute constitutional? It is. Here the 
General Assembly used its longstanding constitutional authority to create causes of 
action like this one. 
¶ 92 
 
All political power resides in the people, N.C. Const. art. I, § 2, and the people 
act through the General Assembly. State ex rel. Ewart v. Jones, 116 N.C. 570, 570, 21 
S.E. 787, 787 (1895) (“[T]he sovereign power resides with the people and is exercised 
by their representatives in the General Assembly.”). The General Assembly therefore 
may presumptively take any legislative action not specifically prohibited by the North 
Carolina Constitution. McIntyre v. Clarkson, 254 N.C. 510, 515, 119 S.E.2d 888, 891 
(1961) (“[A] doctrine firmly established in the law is that a State Constitution is in no 
matter a grant of power. All power which is not limited by the Constitution inheres 
in the people, and an act of a State legislature is legal when the Constitution contains 
no prohibition against it.” (alteration in original) (quoting Lassiter v. Northampton 
Cnty. Bd. of Elections, 248 N.C. 102, 112, 102 S.E.2d 853, 861 (1958), aff’d, 360 U.S. 
45, 54, 79 S. Ct. 985, 991, 3 L. Ed. 2d 1072, 1078 (1959))). Thus, as this Court has 
regularly noted, any alleged constitutional limitation on the General Assembly’s 
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Newby, C.J., concurring in the result 
 
 
 
 
power must be express and demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt. E.g., Hart v. 
State, 368 N.C. 122, 126, 774 S.E.2d 281, 284 (2015).  
¶ 93 
 
In keeping with its general legislative power, the General Assembly has the 
authority to recognize threats to the public good, identify an injury, and provide for 
the appropriate remedy. A statute may create a private cause of action even if the 
common law would not provide that right. See Rhyne v. K-Mart Corp., 358 N.C. 160, 
169, 594 S.E.2d 1, 8 (2004) (The General Assembly is inarguably “the policy-making 
agency of our government, and when it elects to legislate in respect to the subject 
matter of any common law rule, the statute supplants the common law rule and 
becomes the public policy of the State in respect to that particular matter.” (quoting 
McMichael v. Proctor, 243 N.C. 479, 483, 91 S.E.2d 231, 234 (1956))). 
¶ 94 
 
The General Assembly may therefore create “private attorney general actions.” 
Private attorney general actions allow nongovernmental actors to enforce laws. These 
actions are integral to the well-being of this State’s citizens. They are often used when 
the harm is to the public generally and is difficult to quantify. Such a statute by its 
own accord recognizes that an injury has occurred and allows a specified party to sue 
for recovery. See, e.g., Mayton v. Hiatt’s Used Cars, Inc., 45 N.C. App. 206, 212, 262 
S.E.2d 860, 864 (1980) (indicating that when a statute allows for a private attorney 
general action, it may be irrelevant whether the party bringing the suit has suffered 
an “actual injury”). For an action to qualify as one brought by a private attorney 
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Newby, C.J., concurring in the result 
 
 
 
 
general, the action usually must address a right that is important to the public 
interest and provide for private enforcement. See, e.g., Stephenson v. Bartlett, 177 
N.C. App. 239, 244, 628 S.E.2d 442, 445 (2006) (explaining the traditional treatment 
of private attorney general actions in the context of awards of attorney’s fees). These 
actions deter wrongdoing by incentivizing private parties to prosecute violations. 
¶ 95 
 
Indeed, the General Assembly has established a private enforcement 
mechanism like the one in this case in several other statutes. For example, North 
Carolina’s Open Meetings Law, which requires certain government meetings to be 
open to the public, allows for such suits. It says that “[a]ny person” may bring a suit 
for an injunction to force the government entity to comply with the law, and “the 
plaintiff need not allege or prove special damage different from that suffered by the 
public at large.” N.C.G.S. § 143-318.16A(a) (2019). The law allows the plaintiff to be 
awarded attorney’s fees upon prevailing in such a suit. N.C.G.S. § 143-318.16B 
(2019).  
¶ 96 
 
Some laws go even further, mirroring the statute in this case, by providing for 
specified statutory damages without requiring the plaintiff to prove actual injury. See 
N.C.G.S. § 75-56(b) (2019) (“Any debt collector who fails to comply with any provision 
of this Article with respect to any person is liable to such person in a private action 
in an amount equal to the sum of (i) any actual damage sustained by such person as 
a result of such failure and (ii) civil penalties the court may allow, but not less than 
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Newby, C.J., concurring in the result 
 
 
 
 
five hundred dollars ($500.00) nor greater than four thousand dollars ($4,000) for 
each violation.”); see also N.C.G.S. § 75-118(a)(2) (2019) (providing that any recipient 
of an unsolicited facsimile may bring a suit to recover “five hundred dollars ($500.00) 
for the first violation, one thousand dollars ($1,000) for the second violation, and five 
thousand dollars ($5,000) for the third and any other violation that occurs within two 
years of the first violation”). The General Assembly has therefore used its 
constitutional authority to recognize public injuries, declare an appropriate plaintiff, 
and fashion a proper remedy on several occasions, including in this case.  
¶ 97 
 
Private attorney general actions with statutory damages serve to vindicate the 
rights of an injured public when harm is hard to quantify. The General Assembly, 
within its constitutional authority, provided for such a cause of action and such 
damages in this case. Plaintiff has the right to sue under this statute, and neither the 
North Carolina Constitution nor this Court’s precedent limit courts from hearing the 
case.  
¶ 98 
 
I respectfully concur in the result.