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Page Number: 17.0

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

13 

Opinion of the Court 

As those examples illustrate, if the law of Article III did 
not  require  plaintiffs  to  demonstrate  a  “concrete  harm,” 
Congress  could  authorize  virtually  any  citizen  to  bring  a 
statutory  damages  suit  against  virtually  any  defendant
who violated virtually any federal law.  Such an expansive
understanding of Article III would flout constitutional text, 
history, and precedent.  In our view, the public interest that
private entities comply with the law cannot “be converted 
into an individual right by a statute that denominates it as
such,  and  that  permits  all  citizens  (or,  for  that  matter,  a
subclass of citizens who suffer no distinctive concrete harm) 
to sue.”  Lujan, 504 U. S., at 576–577.2 

A  regime  where  Congress  could  freely  authorize  un-
harmed plaintiffs to sue defendants who violate federal law 
not only would violate Article III but also would infringe on 
the Executive Branch’s Article II authority.  We accept the 
“displacement of the democratically elected branches when
necessary to decide an actual case.”  Roberts, 42 Duke L. J., 
at 1230.  But otherwise, the choice of how to prioritize and 
how aggressively to pursue legal actions against defendants
who violate the law falls within the discretion of the Exec-
utive  Branch,  not  within  the  purview  of  private  plaintiffs 

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and expansive causes of action that in turn have required greater judicial
focus on the requirements of Article III.  See, e.g., Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 
578 U. S. 330 (2016); Summers v. Earth Island Institute, 555 U. S. 488 
(2009); Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555 (1992). 

2 A  plaintiff  must  show  that  the  injury  is  not  only  concrete  but  also 
particularized.  But if there were no concrete-harm requirement, the re-
quirement  of  a  particularized  injury  would  do  little  or  nothing  to  con-
strain Congress from freely creating causes of action for vast classes of 
unharmed plaintiffs to sue any defendants who violate any federal law.
(Congress might, for example, provide that everyone has an individual
right to clean air and can sue any defendant who violates any air-pollu-
tion law.)  That is one reason why the Court has been careful to empha-
size that concreteness and particularization are separate requirements. 
See  Spokeo,  578  U. S.,  at  339–340;  see  generally  Bayefsky,  Constitu-
tional Injury and Tangibility, 59 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 2285, 2298–2300, 
2368 (2018).