Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-235_n7ip.pdf
Page Number: 33.0

4 

FDA v. ALLIANCE FOR HIPPOCRATIC MEDICINE 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

traditional understanding of the judicial power.  Our doc-
trine permits an association to have standing based purely 
upon a member’s injury, not its own.  If a single member of 
an association has suffered an injury, our doctrine permits
that association to seek relief for its entire membership—
even  if  the  association  has  tens  of  millions  of  other,  non-
injured  members.  See  Brief  for  Professor  F.  Andrew 
Hessick as Amicus Curiae 28 (explaining that, among other 
associations, the American Association of Retired People’s 
“potential standing is staggering” because our doctrine per-
mits it to “sue to redress” the injury of a single member out
of its “almost thirty-eight million members”).  As I have al-
ready explained in the context of third-party standing, Ar-
ticle III does not allow a plaintiff to seek to vindicate some-
one else’s injuries.  See June Medical, 591 U. S., at 364–366 
(opinion of THOMAS, J.); Kowalski, 543 U. S., at 135 (opin-
ion  of  THOMAS,  J.).    It  is  difficult  to  see  why  that  logic
should not apply with equal force to an association as to any 
other plaintiff.  I thus have serious doubts that an associa-
tion can have standing to vicariously assert a member’s in-
jury.

The Alliance’s attempted use of our associational-stand-
ing doctrine illustrates how far  we have strayed from the 
traditional rule that plaintiffs must assert only their own 
injuries.  The Alliance is an association whose members are 
other associations.  See 1 App. 9–10.  None of its members 
are  doctors.  Instead,  the  Alliance  seeks  to  have  associa-
tional  standing  based  on  injuries  to  the  doctors  who  are 
members  of  its  member  associations.    Thus,  the  allegedly 
injured  parties—the  doctors—are  two  degrees  removed 
from the party before us pursuing those injuries. 

Second, our associational-standing doctrine does not ap-
pear to comport with the requirement that the plaintiff pre-
sent an injury that the court can redress.  For a plaintiff to
have standing, a court must be able to “provid[e] a remedy 
that  can  redress  the  plaintiff ’s  injury.”  Uzuegbunam  v.