plaintiff suffered actual or imminent tangible harm in lieu on the court said that congress may elevate to the status of legally cognizable injuries concrete de facto injuries that were previously a matter quit in law here the ninth circuit held that there's no congress needs to have recognized something that looks like a concrete injury but why isn't that exactly what congress did here so let me just frame it in a hypothetical suppose that there is just a statute it's a little bit of a simpler statute and you can argue with me or tell me why it might or might not be different but i just want to understand your position suppose that there's a statute that just says that one of these credit reporting agencies shall not disseminate in accurate information about people or shall not do it willfully or negligently or what have you but shall not disseminate inaccurate information about people and then there's a cause of action that says if they disseminate it inaccurate information and a credit report about you you can sue alright is that enough of a concrete injury for you no it's not for three reasons your honor and let me preface my response by saying that of course that isn't the case with respect to three of the claims in this case which don't have anything to do with in fact ok but let me just focus on what i see i'm happy to focus travel men of the claim and why isn't the dissemination of false information about you in a credit report why isn't that why isn't it perfectly sufficient of congress says that's a concrete injury well i guess as a threshold matter i think what  the court has said in other contexts is that congress should clearly say that it is going beyond the tangible injuries that this court has defined the court has had a clear statement rule and so another difference between your hypothetical i'm not sure whether your hypothetical as a congress clearly saying and by the way we are creating a cause of action for people who otherwise couldn't get into court i'm sorry let me start but maybe i can answer you said in this there were reasons why that was not a concrete injury the dissemination of false information about a particular person because to me i'll just say it seems like a concrete injury to me well you know first of all i mean it's somebody did it to me i'd feel horrible and i think that if you went out on the street and you did a survey most people would feel harms most people would feel as though they had some interest that had been invaded and congress recognized that thought it was a significant problem passed the statute to deal with that problem first of all that the common law tradition which the court has looked to did not say that the dissemination of any false statement was an injury to prove defamation but that's quite right it's not it's not completely in the common law tradition but we've said many that congress gets to look beyond the common law tradition and gets to identify real world problems out there in the world harming people in real world ways and that it seems as what congress did here well let me answer your question in two ways i want to explain why why it isn't and then i also want to explain why it's not what congress did here so why isn't there are places that the court has looked provides one is the common law other other kinds of torts for example in the restatement can you explain the woman versus the legislature so if we have some historic practice where afield from from justice kagan question but i think the common law had some very specific areas where it defined the actual harm for example any untrue mission on a property right is actual harm but there has to be a property right for that to be so so i think congress could create a property right and if it did that sorry you're saying contrary to one citation you're actually as by persons why that it isn't  that congress has given you i think your honor i think most of the common law rights like property rights are are given to you by statute they're not given to you by the common law most people are coming in to sue on the basis of a statute and the question is that there are several ways that they can establish standing one is to have the tangible harm to meet the general tangible harm test that this court applies generally the standing context and that can be economic injury it can be other kinds of injury in the court of the ply that enter in a wide variety of contexts the court has also that it is also clear that in the property rights context when congress does doesn't create or the common law doesn't just create a right to sue but confers a property right the right to exclude generally as the court has put it that any intrusion on that property right on that right to exclude is tangible harm and the court has made clear in that i would have a dozen or more cases that didn't involve property rights where we didn't require economic harm those would be nothing to you you was legal rights we just decided through the centuries all those cases wrong well i don't think there certainly are any cases that my friends cite that meet that test it's not just economic harm it can be psychic harm there are other somebody has a law about you or gives false information what's different it could be if i can just finish my answer to just the sort of my work is i just want to make clear and i think the college savings case is a perfect analogy here that every cause of action does not confer property right the court there made that clear and that's why the property rights rationale doesn't apply here now turning back to justice kagan's question i think there are other areas other than defamation where there is some guidance about what constitutes tangible harm for example in the false light cases the restatement has a comment that i think this is a restatement second of court six fifty two e com it see that's very on point that says complete and perfect accuracy of published reports concerning any individual seldom attainable by any reasonable effort and minor errors such as a wrong address or a mistake in the date of employment or similar unimportant details we have not been used yet these are not unimportant details this is a great basically  everything wrong about him you know they got his marital status around they got his income wrong they got his education wrong they basically put trade a different person than well your honor your hypothetical that was any false statement and i'm drawing to respond to why ruling by a rule by congress o any false statement wouldn't qualify so there are some legal precedents that appellant here's the thing mr pinkas it seems to me that the one thing that we have to say congress is better than we are is identifying concrete harms i mean it awfully fine and i agree with very large portions of your brief when you say they have to have identified a concrete time and said yes they do but now the question is did they identify what and it seems pretty clear what they wanted to do here that this statute is entirely about preventing the dissemination of inaccurate information in credit reports which they seem to think is both something that harms the individual personally and also harms the larger systemic issues  and then they gave the cause of action to the people it harmed personally and i guess i mean don't we owe them a little bit of respect that they've actually identified a real world harm that it that is out there well i think there's a threshold assumption in your question that congress actually identified that as a real world harm and i think there are two problems with that first of all the structure of the statute indicates that that's not so the willfulness cause of action that provides for statutory damages applies to every violation of the statute that's willful including those that don't involve false statements so by enacting if the argument is by enacting the willfulness course of action congress said inaccuracy is so clearly harmful that it should be actionable in any case it couldn't but it's just not possible to look at that's the way the statute was constructed and say that that was so how much more do you think the plaintiff in this case would have to allege or prove in order to show injury in fact i think if the plaintiffs could show that there was some some consequence to him some from the false information something happened to his credit something happened to an appointment that's really are having to do it's actually both get these reports and you don't know what they're doing with these reports they might have not given you a job for that reason or they might have not given you a job or some other reason they might have not given you credit for that reason or they might have not given you credit for some other reason i mean it's actually the quintessential kind of injury that you will never be able to detect and surely not to prove well your honor i'm not sure that so i mean i think defamation claim circ that the same situation people don't know necessarily if the if the statement is not defamation per se people have to go out and find proof or at least i suppose not argument underline some of the question you asked assumes that if t there is there has to be some real injury is it different because this is a credit agency that is regulated has a credit agency have less latitude when it is defending on the ground of no concrete injury then other entities well i think there's a threshold question your honor of whether congress made the determination that there should be a different treatment for for credit agencies and i think for the reason that i gave about to justice kennedy's question i think what congress did here was to create a massive number of regulatory requirements that are imposed on credit reporting agencies and all of those regulatory requirements together were supposed to produce accuracy i  think there can't be if it's not logical to impute to congress a finding that the violation of any one of those many many many requirements it is actionable is the absence of real horror though a question of the application of the statute no i think it doesn't empowered they the injury here because this is the quintessential violation of the statute he's saying they don't have reasonable procedures to check their accuracy we know from the purpose section of the statute that that's what congress wanted reasonable procedures is going to have to prove that number two he says the information about me is faults i'm going to assume for purposes of this argument because we have to do that and so there's a court below with respect to standing that much of that information is inaccurate i will tell you that i know plenty of single people who look at whether someone who's proposed the date is married or not so if you're not married and there's a report out there saying you won't that's a potential injury now i know the court below said it was speculative but that's what congress was worried about both credit worthiness and and your stature as a person your privacy your sense of self that i can identify myself with some others can identify me with some actors well just so and so i guess my question is we've now taken a word concreteness that the court in recent years has applied to injuries by citizens and when they can bring actions or not a generalized grievance we set up a taxpayer is not concrete enough we've taken this doctrine and you're trying to superimpose the word concrete into legally created rights but for sent for two decades and i mean two centuries we've always said in de facto injuries as to which there's no cause of action can be made actionable when congress creates a cause of action that's quite different from saying that something that doesn't qualify under this court's injury injury in fact and as tangible harm can be made actionable which is what the ninth circuit decided here and i also i want to also with you entirely ok can i just go ahead i just want to also sort of distinguish it in responding to your question i think there are two questions one one question is expand beyond where the court has gone in defining things that should qualify as sufficient injury to trigger article three jurisdiction we think there are two questions there one is has congress in fact done that and there's a question whether congress has done that at all and i think justice kennedy in his concurrence and fed if congress is going to do that it should say clearly because that obviously is a change in the jurisdiction of the federal courts and so congress might be taken it's just does it by doing it you know congress doesn't announce exactly well i'm not sure we are we're just going beyond the common law it just does it and it does it and it did it here it said you know what are we concerned about we're concerned about following the kinds of procedures that will make sure that there are accurate credit reports and then congress told you exactly why in the purposes section of the statute and my gosh it's all over the legislative history the most serious problem in the credit reporting and industry congress says is the problem of inaccurate and misleading information well and and so congress has clearly done that here and i guess i if you want to just identified in the world even though they haven't arisen before or right then identified a footballer but the courts i think the question and i take the burden of my friends argument to be that congress can define things as sufficient to satisfy standing even if they wouldn't if they just were certain that a court satisfy the tangible harm requirement so i guess to respond to these i think and i agree with you ok well then well i think then the district court here held that that tangible harm requirement wasn't satisfied mr pinkas i would have thought that your incher to justice kagan would have been congress did not identify as the procedures that it imposed upon credit reporting agencies it said nothing about people who have been hurt by misinformation being able to sue it said anybody can sue who's been reported on if the agency failed to use the procedures so in fact congress has not identified misinformation as a softball or that's not what the statute does and i apologize if i did that as a safe harbor we are not it's a kind of industry friendly act that congress did it said we're not going to punish any old in accuracy we're giving you a safe harbor if as long as you followed a certain set of procedures don't worry about it but there's that procedural requirement this is this is exactly what lou hahn says it's a procedural requirement the disregard of which could impair a concrete interest of the plaintiff and we distinguish that from procedural requirements in fact the well well that's what this is it's a procedural requirement the disregard of which can impair your interest in being represented accurately in credit reports well there are some problems with that your honor i mean there are many of them to see that that would lead to the conclusion that anybody can sue exactly which is somebody who used the information once was before most known but if i are on a most of the statutory right and regulatory requirements have nothing to do with falsity they have to do with the following rules there's nothing in the cause of action that says you can only sue for  statement is false it says any willful violation of this entire regulatory statute so the idea that congress any person who willfully fails to comply with any requirement paul impose upon the subject with respect to any consumer is liable to that consumer so it's not the whole world it's the consumer what you dealt with or iran agency that the agency more importantly as as the respondent has said is a sixteen eighty one which does talk about accuracy and it makes it clear that the procedures are linked to accuracy and i totally take your point that well how about the person who there's there's been no inaccuracy well that person does not have standing that person cannot come in and say that he suffered a concrete injury but the person who has been in accurately represented can come in and say he has suffered exactly the concrete injury that this statute is designed to protect against what but your honor i don't see how you can say that a course of action that says nothing about an accuracy statute that would allow this individual to bring suit i think congress yes i think it might be possible and let me explain how justice kennedy i think first of all to respond to one of justice earlier questions i don't think it's crystal clear what congress was doing here because i think the most likely interpretation of this provision was it was an acted against the background of this court's jurisprudence which requires tangible harm and  congress was most likely saying was we know that quantify monetising that tangible harm in this context is hard so if there's a willful violation we're going to give you a minimum i think the wesen why it makes sense to require congress to speak clearly if it is going beyond what this court has required for tangible harm is precisely because it is necessary to identify that congress actually intends to give access to the federal courts beyond that which would be regulations which congress thought taken together would improve accuracy i don't think you can say that any single one of them the violation of any single one of them congress thought was going to so likely to inflict injury on some person that they should be entitled to all of them go to work your receiver know some of them go to privacy and other matters most of my one is about having an eight hundred number available one has to do with noticed and to people who look at it as that would be a violation right if you didn't  provide that under and under and presumably anybody if you believe responded to anybody who whose information is not accurate can sue to get the statutory damages for failure to provide an eight hundred number well i think respondents would say even if the information was accurate you could sue to get off that a tory damages i think justice kagan might limit it to people who are in our national id when we normally have a standing in there will can be some people who have standing under a particular statute and some who don't is it is your position simply that you have to look at whether the plaintiffs have been injured in fact and that some plaintiffs will be able to proceed if they can make that showing you know there's may not absolutely mr chief justice that's our position that's and and the district court held in this case looking at the allegations of the complaint that the court's injury in fact standard wasn't satisfied with inserted by the particular violation injured in fact by  not by failure to have an eight hundred number say no but would this man be able i mean this is very much in line with the chief justices would he be able to sue based on the facts that there was in accurate information about him no because the district court found that all of the allegations of all of his arguments about why there was any tangible harm to him were speculative and flunked this co class and you could get millions of plaintiffs and billions of dollars if we feel that congress can give consumers a right to redress for false credit reporting if we have that we do have grounds to oppose certification of a well i think the problem here your honor is if you accept the broad theory that plaintiffs in the government the spouse which is all you have to show is a statutory violation it's a pretty clear pathway to class certification because there's only common issues and that's what has happened in case after case now if falsity has to be proven then obviously that is an individualized issue that might make it more in title meant to monetary relief as a consequence of that violation shows he has the personal stake that article three requires and third the fact that his claim follows from the common law defamation conclusively establishes it is a case or controversy within the a contract case so if this were a contract instead of a statute and the same duties and and liabilities came to be and it was a liquidated damages cos he had a duty that was violated he had an entitlement to money the one thing the court would not do in that case is look behind me entitle me to see whether he really was harmed in some other way than other otherwise being owed the money all congress has to do is provide for damages right now after much more than that it has to still create an interest a discreet legal interest that's personal to him but only that is not a generalized grievance that is not an undifferentiated harm let's do all of those same things the point we get but it is the harm that is the harm and use it is the harm because he can't get the money that he w the circular so the hawk the violation of a legally vested interest a common law in this court's decisions throughout has always been deemed a concrete harm going back to tennessee electric where the court naturally used to say that  legal right was an injury then in camp the court expanded beyond that to say no practical injuries two can be legal injuries but it never negated the earlier more difficult test what about law that says  a ten thousand dollar a statutory damages if a company publishes inaccurate information about you you want you have an unlisted phone number you don't want people calling you the company publishes your phone number but it's wrong that is inaccurate information about you that you have no injury whatever in that person bring an action for that statutory damage congress has a lot of work to do there and so our congress has a great deal of work at it to do to show guide can you have do you have standing do you have injury in fact when you don't want people calling you the company publishes a false telephone number it has a lot of workers at the end of the day can  recover those statutory damages if congress identify the interest of you receiving a phone call and if that's the injury and you don't receive the phone call you haven't suffered the injury congress that a no no no i'm sorry i'm sorry the injury they identify is we don't think companies should public falls that pub publish false information about you is it the end of the standing inquiry to say they publish false information about me or do you have to ask were you injured in some way by between an injury in fact an injury in law a legally vested interest whether created by congress or created by the common law is itself a concrete injury but are cases of always said actual injury in fact and i thought that meant that that was different than actual injury in law you're saying when we say injury in fact we really mean injury in fact or injury and no i don't really think there is a term injury in law i've not seen it in the cases what i do see going back to camp which is the first case that uses the phrase injury in fact that concept with design to get to really important thing is one that the harm is not speculative and not to play word games but i think it means that you are in fact injured as opposed to that you have actually been injured and the second that it's not a generalized grievance that of it oh that's a very different question i understand generalized grievance you can't just say even i think you get or any citizen the united states can sue about this you have to particularize it to some extent but that's a different question as to whether there's actual injury so i think there's a quarter to the phrase concrete particularized at two companion words i think getting at the same concepts now two things have to happen one to show that it's a differentiated claim that's not a generalized grievance you have to identify a subclass of people who are distinctly harmed other than the general population that's the concrete part that was lesson for says why this particular eyes part the particulars part is that you're among was going to say the in the case of the moon case as they facto which is actual existing in fact having effect even though not formally or legally recognized so yes and then the concurring opinion explained that it didn't work and when your honor said that it congress could also play a role in that in identifying those injuries and here did it i'll be out of this is my own view of this maybe no one else is but you sound as if we are describing a form of what used to be called the public action of which there were no such examples in federal law those states up because you want people who aren't hurt in fact to be able to sit and the example here is not just the chief justices which is the more immediate example which seems to be in this case i didn't think it was but it now seems to be are people perhaps not this point but people who in fact notice that someone like the defendant has filed bad procedures leading to false information and those people who were not injured bring a lawsuit and they say they're following bad information that's a bad procedure and congress gave me one hundred dollars so give it to me now that's the person i didn't know was in this case because this p seems to argue specific discrepancies in fact that in all likelihood heard it ok but we're leaving him out of it i want to know what the government thinks of the case i just quote dude does the government thing a person who admits nobody said anything wrong about me they did say something about me it was all correct but they are using bad bad of practices for assembling consumer information in the government's view does the person in my hypothetical similar to the chiefs may be identical does he or does he not have stand yes or no are he responded to that he does not find if you say he does not then we are limiting this case to the case of people who are victims of not just bad practices but false information about them and that's what the words with respect to any consumer me that they mean any consumer who has obtained who suffers from false information you have that's the government's position and it's not a me if i'm wrong you don't have files someplace for every person in the united states or you have databases and you will do a search if somebody asks you to do a search i soon you wouldn't say that somebody as to whom there never had been a search would have standing right even if you know even if it would be the case that if there was a search it would come up with a lot of false information so for it to be a consumer report there must be a communication with third party so we have alleged communication to third parties at the pleading feta must be accepted as true at this point but spokeo i believe on the website does not share that information who search for you and this is really important is almost impossible to know if he applied for a job with a major employer in this country who had five thousand job applicants and they pull his report here is what's go here with selling we are the arbiter of truth if it says he went to college a on his resume and we tell you went to college b he is a liar if he says he is thirty years old and we say he is fifty five years old he is a liar that is their business that is what they are selling there is no way i thought they had some disclaimer that spokeo does not verify or evaluate each piece of data makes no warranties or guarantees about any of the information offer offered and i was not saying if it's not accurate you're a lot he's and then it sells the then it promotes its its service and this is in the f t c report and also in the complaint to human resources executive saying if you want to run employee checks come to us it would be a strange business if they said come to us but who knows if what we're telling you is true and and i think that's what the disclaimer is but that whether this claim was valid well that is that that is exactly what the disclaimer says but of course congress stepped into the breach and do the best you can you know it was are you going to do the best you do the right we all the person who wires somebody if if they all have this disclaimer which i expect they all do you either go without any information or you accept one except congress stepped in and said if you are operating as a consumer reporting agency you have duties and responsible when i ask about what you think congress did you're saying it's limited to two people about whom false information has been given suppose congress enacts a statute that says everybody has a right to sue for exorbitant expenditures by the department of defense this affects everybody you know the nine hundred dollar toilet seat and so forth everybody can sue that clearly would not be allowable but suppose somebody is a a disappointed bidder for the toilet seat and he sues under that statute and he said oh able to sue do you think that would be true likely not likely not here not on why is this case any different you are saying only people who have been injured assuming that that that false information is injury only they can sue but the statute doesn't say that only they can sue it says that everybody about whom school kayo did did a report can sue so it says this statute does things that the hypothetical statute does not this statute says starting with the cause of action if you have done something that violates the statute with respect to a specific consumer that consumer can see right then second then you look at the provision that we are basing the claim on here in the reasonable procedures provision so that provision in particular which is the only one for the court where do you get the the necessity of injury in fact so if there do you get the necessity that there have been false information which you assert is there so it is reasonable procedures to ensure maximum possible accuracy procedures to ensure maximum that doesn't mean there has to be accuracy you know where congress actually did something better for the industry to give them a limitation on liability so congress thought about giving strict liability here and keep in mind just congress preempted almost all state law claims here they preempted state law defamation so just the notion that this isn't about defamation when they preempted state law defamation strikes me as a very difficult argument so you're only in federal court and the congress said one who can sue means that when you fail to do it in respect to a consumer you say something falls about that consumer it doesn't use those words and we would have to so construe it in order to say the constitutionality of the statute and every clerk or to reach this question has held that i would be true you could fail to to to follow the procedures and still come up with accurate information like you could not have an eight hundred number that's correct and  it it's impossible to read it that way because it's simply not true so just every lower court to reach this question has held that this particular provision requires falsely as an allegation multiple courts of appeals but i want to i understand and take the falsity out of the the hypotheticals to get exactly what your position is on the the breadth of congress's power so let's say the statute says anybody who's publishing information about you has to pay the individual ten dollars a year they think that's a good way to regulate it information about you good bad or indifferent pay them ten dollars a year no more no less spokeo or whatever that business pays you twenty dollars one year now you've been that the statute has been violated with respect to you a particular individual and that in the end there is statutory damages of ten thousand dollars and that individual sue so does that individual have injury in fact because the statute has been violated with respect to him that i think though because that's actual play to everybody in the country you would be no no no no and you know if you have to have published information about an individual every individual who you publish information about it's ten dollars a year or so i think that would make it particular eyes but not concrete so it would be no the standing that person would have no standing even though congress gave him standing congress can c dollars does he have standing to sue under that snow i don't think so because it would apply so broadly to everybody you know any you have i said this just before they have to have published information about you if they don't they don't have to pay you anything right and understand you said you you need for the information to be an accurate to have standing here that is going to mean that the class and if you've defined it is not going to be certified and i think that that's the right answer but i just want to make sure that we're on the we're on the same page here yes so the class was and this is going to come up later this term in the tyson case but the class has to be defined as broadly as it was because of what's called a fail safe problem you can't identify a class by an element of the cause of action and that's because it harms defendants rights so if we had alleged the class here was everybody who had inaccurate information it would be a trick against them because if they defeated the framework some of that is discussed in the regulatory commentary explains what that is but the specific things mentioned in count one count two and count three the furniture notices the user notices in the toll free number are specific examples of reasonable procedures they or no these are big picture questions but this case can be resolved on a much now or issue this court has always held that if the cause of action you allege can be found in the common law and is developed from the common law as in stevens that you have standing this claim for false information falls directly from the common law definition the ninth circuit didn't address that question did it i mean as i understand it i'm looking at that footnote you know on page nine a it says it doesn't matter because you  statutory injury in law is enough right not well but the statute falls from definition just as and in stevens it was about the statute was about the particular individual they said to keep am statute follow from the common law the it was either in one of those areas where it is presumed to be damaging you know such as it's you know about your moral life or something like that or for your incompetence in your profession or else you had to show up positive suit mr chief justice and may i please the court in defenders of wildlife the court gave the following description of what injury in fact means that said injury in fact is quote an invasion of a legally protected interest which is a concrete and particular  be actual or imminent not conjectural or hypothetical and so the injury part of it was the invasion of a legally protected injury interest and i think it's clear what were the words in fact are doing in that description if mr robbins of cases it didn't appear in the quote you gave it did it say i mean actual or imminent well concrete in particular i used an actual or imminent not conjectural or hypothetical and the court has explained both the terms concrete and particularized as aspects of the requirement that the wrong be done to the particular point not that it be done to the community as a whole and the court used the terms that way in schlesinger mr stewart let's say your your congress thinks that the president is not doing enough to stop illegal immigration so it passes a law that says anyone in a border state particularized who is unemployed may bring an action against an illegal immigrant who has a job and they get damages maybe they get an injunction can congress do that well i think there are a couple of different problems with that the first would be that there may be some there may be some legal issues that congress can't simply delegate to private enforcement that are like the criminal law for instance there would be a constitution potential consul i think that's kind of avoiding the common law analogues that we've cited that the class of people who could file suit would be people whom the prohibited conduct had a natural tendency to harm you know we're talking about congress as well the people who are unemployed illegal immigrants have jobs they should be able to sue to stop that because the you know because they congress thinks the president isn't doing enough i mean i think it would be i think that would stretch the limits of congress's power to to treat those that broad class of individuals as victims of all acts of illegal immigration and obviously the statute in that we're dealing with here doesn't come anywhere close to that and i understand the court's concerns with the implications of our position but i think it's also worth pointing out this is a mode of enforcement that congress has been using since seventy nine in the first copyright act congress enacted a provision that said if there is in french but the copyright owner can get actual damages if he can prove them or failing that i mean you know that you know the objection behind behind my hypotheticals which is congress can say basically to a group of citizens you get to enforce one of our laws because we're giving you a cause of action doesn't matter whether you've actually been injured or not we just have to particular to some extent and i would have thought that the president would be concerned about congress being able to create its own in forstmann mechanism i thought that you would be concerned that that would interfere with the executives prerogatives i think when we get to the point of  hypothetical where any unemployed person in the state is treated as the legal victim of every act of unlawful immigration that occurs in that state we do have concerns but the statute we're dealing with here says the statue we're dealing with everybody about whom false information has been given and is somebody about whom false information that harms him has been given i mean the class is not is not coextensive with again again leaving aside the potential the possibility that immigration is something that can't be dealt with by private suits if there was some particularized connection required if a person could show that he applied for the job that the illegal immigrant received that that would be a much different sort of statute here the statute we're dealing with doesn't say in the community in the border states is not proximate enough for you let's just say anybody who is unemployed in the community where there is an illegal immigrant can so i think that's still probably too broad a class and i understand the allure of the hypotheticals but you could do the same thing with rational basis review of substantive legislation you could come up with endless hypotheticals about statutes that we're just at the border between really stupid and so stupid as to be actually irrational however it says that this is dealing with the requirement of a case or controversy was has always been recognize as at the core of article three jurisdiction and we have a legion of cases that say you have to have actual injury that's what makes it a decision appropriate for resolution by the judicial branch and it seems a little bit more important than saying you can challenge particular statutes but the point is i was trying to make was that congress has been doing this since seventy nine and nobody's point to a statute that comes close to the hypotheticals but to return to the point about injury in fact the court has said there has to be actual injury but defined injury as though invasion of illegal part of legally protected interest the violation of a legal right the most recent edition of blocks of law dictionary gives as its first definition of injury the violation of another legal rights for which the law provides a remedy this is what we've also said that violation of a procedure even if you are given a right to the procedure that alone does not suffice for standing that is a procedure that that  procedure in vacuo that leads to nothing but what we said that today has to be something more than just the violation of what that what the congress says is a legal right that that is not enough and at the court has also said that congress can't give every citizen a entitlement to sue simply by calling it a legal right but with respect to procedures the court has said you can sue to complain about the deprivation of lawfully required procedures if those procedures are intended to protect a cry right here we have in the complaint i guess there were certain errors a photograph of the wrong person a statement that he's in his fifty's he isn't that he's married he isn't these employed in a professional or technical field he isn't that he has children he doesn't that he has a graduate degree he doesn't that his economic health is very strong it isn't and his wealth level is in the top ten percent it is ok so that i gather is what he is complaining about something like that now for purposes of deciding this case are we simply to refer to this and say this is a case about a person who's complaining this and is this which i just listed a sufficiently concrete injury yes absolutely and i was there and that's not what the ninth circuit based its decision on the ninth circuit says he has standing by virtue of the alleged violations of his statutory rights without respect to whether there was harm to his employment prospects or related anxiety so i would suppose if we're going to decide on that basis we have to determine that the ninth circuit's that rationale was in  i don't have the exact wording in front of you but if you look at the very first sentence of the ninth circuit's opinion the ninth circuit says the question we confront is whether a person has injury in fact when false information about him is disseminated  court said we don't have to decide what is added to the complaint by the allegations that employment prospects were actually harmed and it's true and it's also true that the night circuit didn't analyze the question that it rained in quite the way we would have it didn't rely on the defamation analogy it relied on the statutory right but it still described the question before it as whether a person has injury to complain about and mr steele if i could just mean the maybe this is the sentence that you're talking about at one point the court says the interests are protected by the statutory rights at issue are sufficiently concrete and particularized now look it's not a good opinion and then it doesn't tell you why it is that they're sufficiently concrete but they clearly felt that they were sufficiently concrete they understood that as part of the test the other point i would make i agree with that and the other point i would make about defenders of wildlife is the statute issue in that case said any person can sue to complain about particular types of endangered species act violations and the court said that's just too broad congress can't do that but it didn't say therefore the authorization to sue is a no at the end we don't have to worry about whether this plaintiff has standing to sue it analyzed in depth the allegations and the evidence that the particular plaintiffs and defenders of wildlife had put forward and said this is insufficient and then later in bennett versus spear the court applied the same endangered species act provision at the behest of a plaintiff who did have standing so it isn't the case that if congress fails to draw exactly the right line people who would have been within the right line are out of luck i think the allegations the complaint or the important thing to focus on with respect to the defamation analogy i'd say congress in one sense is broader than common law and in another sense it's narrower it's broader in that the statute certainly sweeps in categories of types of all sorts of it types of false words that wouldn't have been defamation per se a common law on the other hand it applies only to consumer reports documents that are intended to be used for concrete primarily canonic purposes thank you counsel mr pinkas you have three minutes remaining thank you mr chief justice justice kagan asked the question earlier about how could people find this you know our legal system is people have to have allegations that they're harmed and i'd urge the court to look at the public justice amicus brief on the other side of the case for a whole series of claims in which the people filed in they were able to make allegations of actual harm statutory violations period including the violations that say nothing about for city ruling on the outcome were we ruling on the reason well your honor i think as the court comes the question presented was does the ninth circuit's rule that statutory violation unaccompanied by any harm is sufficient to satisfy article three i think the court has to address that issue the next issue is did congress elevate it did congress say that false statements inflict a certain kind of harm and therefore we're going to single them out and i think to rely on congress congress actually has to have made that determination and there is nothing in this that that says that as justice pryor said you have to actually read falsity into the statute in order to find falsity congress didn't say anything about the particular harm inflicted by false statements if you want to do that it should say i look at this case slightly differently i think the breach of any legal right you're given is gives article three jurisdiction there's a difference between that and whether you're within the zone of interest of a statute and so what you're saying i'd guess that's why the circuit splode have said you have to be able to allege some falsity in the credit report to get recovery under the statute because those are the people the sort of targeted chip your honor that's not right though all of the decisions that my friends refer to were decisions not where there w claims but where there are actual damages claims no surprise that the courts have said to prove actual damages you have to at least show falsity there has been no decision interpreted in the statute in the context of a willfulness claim to say whether it does and i think the problem with the position on the other side is they want to say congress made this decision that anything inaccurate is is harmful but there's nothing in the statute to say that congress should speak clearly if it wants to do that and then this court has to review that determination  think the question would be has the clue is the class defined by congress congress sufficiently congregant with tangible harm to to satisfy article three and i think here the last of all inaccuracy is can't possibly home what happens to all the restitution cases where you measure the relief by the gain to the defendant there has been no loss to the plaintiffs your honor restitution is all about a measure of damages in all those cases often their breach of contract cases there's harm the property interest conferred by the contract has been violated and the question is a measure of damages in the fiduciary duty context as in the break is the harm the neighbor who's put t trial into the neighbor's mind it is the intrusion on the right to exclude the property interest created by the common law and this statute doesn't create a property interest so it can't be upheld on the spaces thank you counsel cases submitted