Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-840_6jfm.pdf
Page Number: 10

Cite as:  593 U. S. ____ (2021) 

7 

Opinion of the Court 

he has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining 
some direct injury as the result of its enforcement”).

The plaintiffs point out that these and other precedents 
concern injuries anticipated in the future from a statute’s 
later  enforcement.  Here,  the  plaintiffs  say,  they  have  al-
ready  suffered  a  pocketbook  injury,  for  they  have  already 
bought health insurance.  They also emphasize the Court’s 
statement in Lujan that, when a plaintiff is the “ ‘object’ ” of 
a challenged Government action, “ ‘there is ordinarily little 
question that the action . . . has caused him injury, and that 
a judgment preventing . . . the action will redress it.’ ”  Brief 
for  Respondent-Cross  Petitioner  Hurley  et al.  18  (quoting 
Lujan, 504 U. S., at 561–562).  But critically, unlike Lujan,
here  no  unlawful  Government  action  “fairly  traceable”  to 
§5000A(a)  caused  the  plaintiffs’  pocketbook  harm.    Here, 
there  is  no  action—actual  or  threatened—whatsoever. 
There  is  only  the  statute’s  textually  unenforceable  lan-
guage.

To consider the matter from the point of view of another 
standing requirement, namely, redressability, makes clear 
that the statutory language alone is not sufficient.  To de-
termine whether an injury is redressable, a court will con-
sider  the  relationship  between  “the  judicial  relief  re-
quested” and the “injury” suffered.  Allen, 468 U. S., at 753, 
n. 19.  The plaintiffs here sought injunctive relief and a de-
claratory  judgment.    The  injunctive  relief,  however,  con-
cerned the Act’s other provisions that they say are insever-
able  from  the  minimum  essential  coverage  requirement.
The relief they sought in respect to the only provision they 
attack as unconstitutional—the minimum essential cover-
age  provision—is  declaratory  relief,  namely,  a  judicial
statement  that  the  provision  they  attacked  is  unconstitu-
tional.  See App. 61–63 (“Count One: Declaratory Judgment 
That  the  Individual  Mandate  of  the  ACA  Exceeds  Con-
gress’s Article I Constitutional Enumerated Powers” (bold-
face deleted)); 340 F. Supp. 3d, at 619 (granting declaratory