Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 506

524US2

Unit: $U93

[09-11-00 13:25:42] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 524 U. S. 417 (1998)

461

Opinion of Scalia, J.

deferral would have prompted any sale, let alone one that
reﬂected the tax beneﬁt in the sale price.

The closest case the Court can appeal to as precedent for
its ﬁnding of standing is Bryant v. Yellen, 447 U. S. 352
(1980). Even on its own terms, Bryant is distinguishable.
As that case came to us, it involved a dispute between a class
of some 800 landowners in the Imperial Valley, each of whom
owned more than 160 acres, and a group of Imperial Valley
residents who wished to purchase lands owned by that class.
The point at issue was the application to those lands of a
statutory provision that forbade delivery of water from a
federal reclamation project to irrigable land held by a single
owner in excess of 160 acres, and that limited the sale price
of any lands so held in excess of 160 acres to a maximum
amount, ﬁxed by the Secretary of the Interior, based on fair
market value in 1929, before the valley was irrigated by
Id., at 366–367.
water from the Boulder Canyon Project.
That price would of course be “far below [the lands’] current
market values.”
Id., at 367, n. 17. The Court concluded
that the would-be purchasers “had a sufﬁcient stake in the
Id.,
outcome of the controversy to afford them standing.”
at 368.
It is true, as the Court today emphasizes, that the
purchasers had not presented “detailed information about
[their] ﬁnancial resources,” but the Court thought that un-
necessary only because “purchasers of such land would stand
to reap signiﬁcant gains on resale.”
Id., at 367, n. 17. Fi-
nancing, in other words, would be easy to come by. Here,
by contrast, not only do we have no notion whether Snake
River has the cash in hand to afford IPP’s bottom-line price,
but we also have no reason to believe that ﬁnancing of the
purchase will be readily available. Potato processing plants,
unlike agricultural land in the Imperial Valley, do not have
a readily available resale market. On the other side of the
equation, it was also much clearer in Bryant that if the suit
came out in the would-be purchasers’ favor, many of the land-
owners would be willing to sell. The alternative would be