Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1323_c07d.pdf
Page Number: 72

Cite as:  591 U. S. ____ (2020) 

11 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

concluded that two abortionists had standing to challenge
a  State’s  refusal  to  provide  Medicaid  reimbursements  for 
abortions.  Perfunctorily  applying  this  Court’s  require-
ments  for  third-party  standing,  Justice  Blackmun,  joined 
by three other Justices, asserted that abortionists generally
had standing to litigate their clients’ rights.  Id., at 113–118 
(plurality opinion).  Justice Stevens concurred on consider-
ably narrower grounds, reasoning that the abortionists had
standing because they had a financial stake in the outcome
of the litigation and sought to vindicate their own constitu-
tional  rights  as  well.  Id.,  at  121  (opinion  concurring  in 
part).  Notably, Justice Stevens declined to join the plural-
ity’s discussion of third-party standing, explaining that he
was “not sure whether [that analysis] would, or should, sus-
tain  the  doctors’  standing,  apart  from”  their  own  legal
rights and financial interests being at stake in that specific 
case.  Id., at 122.  The four remaining Justices dissented in 
part, concluding that the abortionists lacked standing to lit-
igate the rights of their clients.  Id., at 122–131 (Powell, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part).  Because Justice 
Stevens’ opinion “concurred in the judgmen[t] on the nar-
rowest  grounds,”  it  is  the  controlling  opinion  regarding 
abortionists’ third-party standing.  Marks v. United States, 
—————— 
Even  so,  the Court  only  cursorily  considered  the  question  whether  the
threat of prosecution faced by the abortionists was a sufficiently direct
injury under the Court’s then-existing standing doctrine, id., at 188–189, 
which  was  considerably  more  lenient  than  our  current  understanding.
The Court did not engage in any meaningful Article III analysis or refer 
to this Court’s third-party standing doctrine.  Ibid.; see also Akron v. Ak-
ron Center for Reproductive Health, Inc., 462 U. S. 416, 440, n. 30 (1983) 
(concluding  without  any  analysis  that  an  abortionist  had  standing  to 
raise a claim on behalf of his minor patients).  And notably, the abortion-
ists in that case had brought suit to vindicate their own constitutional 
rights to “practic[e] their . . . professio[n].”  Doe, supra, at 186; see also 
Planned Parenthood of Central Mo. v. Danforth, 428 U. S. 52, 62 (1976)
(concluding, without any analysis of Article III or the third-party stand-
ing doctrine, that abortionists had standing in a suit alleging violations
of both their own constitutional rights and those of their clients).