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Page Number: 26.0

10 

UZUEGBUNAM v. PRECZEWSKI 

ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting 

argues that plaintiffs who seek nominal damages will often 
be  able  to  seek  actual  damages  as  well.    In  this  case,  for 
example, the Court notes that Uzuegbunam and Bradford 
“would have satisfied redressability if instead of one dollar 
in nominal damages they sought one dollar in compensation 
for  a  wasted  bus  fare  to  travel  to  the  free  speech  zone.” 
Ante,  at  11.    Maybe  they  would  have,  and  maybe  they 
should have.  The Court is mistaken, however, to equate a 
small  amount  of  actual  damages  with  the  token  award  of 
nominal  damages.  The  former  redresses  a  compensable
harm and satisfies Article III, while the latter is a legal fic-
tion with “no existence in point of quantity.”  J. Mayne, Law 
of Damages 27 (1856) (internal quotation marks omitted);
see Dobbs, Law of Remedies §3.3(2), at 294 (“Nominal dam-
ages are damages in name only . . . .”). 

The Court also insists that not every “request for nominal 
damages guarantees entry to court.”  Ante, at 11.  Yet its 
holding  admits  of  no  limiting  principle.  As  then-Judge
McConnell remarked in an insightful concurrence on the is-
sue before us, “[i]t is hard to conceive of a case in which a
plaintiff  would  be  unable  to  append  a  claim  for  nominal 
damages, and thus insulate the case from the possibility of 
mootness.”  Utah Animal Rights Coalition v. Salt Lake City 
Corp., 371 F. 3d 1248, 1266 (CA10 2004).  The Court today 
reinforces this point by emphasizing that “every violation of 
a right imports damage,” ante, at 12 (emphasis added; al-
terations  and  internal  quotation  marks  omitted)—even 
though we have definitively and recently held that a plain-
tiff must allege a concrete injury even where his rights have
been violated, see Thole v. U. S. Bank N. A., 590 U. S. ___, 
___ (2020) (slip op., at 5) (“This Court has rejected the ar-
gument that ‘a plaintiff automatically satisfies the injury-
in-fact requirement whenever a statute grants a person a 
statutory right and purports to authorize that person to sue 
to  vindicate  that  right.’ ”  (quoting  Spokeo,  Inc.  v.  Robins, 
578 U. S. 330, 341 (2016))).