Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-968_8nj9.pdf
Page Number: 14.0

Cite as:  592 U. S. ____ (2021) 

11 

Opinion of the Court 

Likewise, any analogy to attorney’s fees and costs fails. 
A request for attorney’s fees or costs cannot establish stand-
ing because those awards are merely a “byproduct” of a suit
that already succeeded, not a form of redressability.  Steel 
Co., 523 U. S., at 107; see also Lewis v. Continental Bank 
Corp., 494 U. S. 472, 480 (1990).  In contrast, nominal dam-
ages are redress, not a byproduct. 

III 
Because nominal damages were available at common law 
in analogous circumstances, we conclude that a request for 
nominal  damages  satisfies  the  redressability  element  of
standing where a plaintiff’s claim is based on a completed 
violation of a legal right.   

The dissent worries that after today the Judiciary will be 
required to weigh in on legal questions “whenever a plain-
tiff asks for a dollar.”  Post, at 9.  But petitioners still would
have satisfied redressability if instead of one dollar in nom-
inal damages they sought one dollar in compensation for a 
wasted bus fare to travel to the free speech zone.  The dis-
sent “would place a higher value on Article III” than a dol-
lar.  Post, at 1; but see Sprint Communications Co. v. APCC 
Services, Inc., 554 U. S. 269, 305 (2008) (ROBERTS, C. J., dis-
senting) (“Article III is worth a dollar”).  But Congress abol-
ished the statutory amount-in-controversy requirement for 
federal-question jurisdiction in 1980.  Federal Question Ju-
risdictional Amendments Act, 94 Stat. 2369.  And we have 
never  held  that  one  applies  as  a  matter  of  constitutional 
law. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  a  request  for  nominal  damages 
guarantees  entry  to  court.  Our  holding  concerns  only  re-
dressability.  It  remains  for  the  plaintiff  to  establish  the 
other elements of standing (such as a particularized injury);
plead  a  cognizable  cause  of  action,  Planck  v.  Anderson,  5 
T. R. 37, 41, 101 Eng. Rep. 21, 23 (K. B. 1792) (“if no [actual] 
damage be sustained, the creditor has no cause of action”