Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/17-1717_4f14.pdf
Page Number: 61.0

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AMERICAN LEGION v. AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSN. 

GORSUCH, J., concurring in judgment 

possessor’s  ability  to  protect  his  own  interests.”    Id.,  at 
130.    Applying  these  principles  in  Kowalski,  this  Court 
held that attorneys lacked standing to assert the rights of 
indigent  defendants.    Id.,  at  127.    And  in  Whitmore,  we 
rejected  a  third  party’s  effort  to  appeal  another  person’s 
death sentence.  495 U. S., at 151.  But if offended observ-
ers  could  sue,  the  attorneys  in  Kowalski  might  have  sim- 
ply claimed they were “offended” by Michigan’s procedure 
for  appointing  appellate  counsel,  and  the  third  party  in 
Whitmore  could  have  just  said  he  was  offended  (as  he 
surely  was)  by  the  impending  execution.    None  of  this 
Court’s limits on third-party standing would really matter. 

* 
  Offended observer standing cannot be squared with this 
Court’s  longstanding  teachings  about  the  limits  of  Article 
III.  Not even today’s dissent seriously attempts to defend 
it.  So at this point you might wonder: How did the lower 
courts in this case indulge the plaintiffs’ “offended observer” 
theory  of  standing?    And  why  have  other  lower  courts 
done similarly in other cases? 
  The truth is, the fault lies here.  Lower courts invented 
offended  observer  standing  for  Establishment  Clause 
cases  in  the  1970s  in  response  to  this  Court’s  decision  in 
Lemon  v.  Kurtzman,  403  U. S.  602  (1971).    Lemon  held 
that  whether  governmental  action  violates  the  Establish-
ment  Clause  depends  on  its  (1) purpose,  (2) effect,  and 
(3) potential  to  “ ‘excessive[ly]  . . .  entangl[e]’ ”  church  and 
state,  id.,  at  613,  a  standard  this  Court  came  to  under-
stand as prohibiting the government from doing anything 
that  a  “ ‘reasonable  observer’ ”  might  perceive  as  “endors-
ing” religion, County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liber-
ties  Union,  Greater  Pittsburgh  Chapter,  492  U. S.  573, 
620–621  (1989)  (opinion  of  Blackmun,  J.);  id.,  at  631 
(O’Connor,  J.,  concurring  in  part  and  concurring  in  judg-
ment).    And  lower  courts  reasoned  that,  if  the  Establish-