Source: https://www.povertylaw.org/clearinghouse/fpmd/chapter3/section1
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 03:49:12+00:00

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Attorneys need to understand the law of standing in order to minimize the likelihood of having to litigate the issue. Avoiding a standing defense requires a careful selection of plaintiffs, thoughtful choice of claims and relief sought, and specific allegation of facts in the complaint. Skillful pleading, therefore, should focus not only on the merits of the claims but also on the standing of the plaintiffs to advance them. Failure to do so may result in delay of the case at best, and dismissal of the case at worst.
In this Chapter, we canvass the important Supreme Court cases on standing and attempt to extract useful generalizations to employ in practice. A brief caveat is in order. Standing cases are very fact specific. While the general discussion here may assist you in understanding the outlines of the standing inquiry, you will need to do specialized research in the area in which your case arises. Just as important, you must carefully interview your clients and perform other necessary factual investigation to assess precisely how your client has or will be injured by the action or policy you contemplate challenging.
Inherent in the constitutional limitation of judicial power on cases and controversies is the requirement of “concrete adverseness” between the parties to a lawsuit. The rise of public interest law litigation involving claims of non-economic loss has forced the Supreme Court to craft an analytical framework for determining whether the requisite adversity is present. The Court requires that plaintiffs establish that the challenged conduct caused or threatens to cause them an injury in fact to judicially cognizable interests. By establishing that they personally suffered injury, plaintiffs demonstrate that they are sufficiently associated with the controversy to be permitted to litigate it. The question of injury raises two questions – (1) what kinds of injuries count for purposes of standing and (2) how certain the injury must be if it has not yet occurred.
The Supreme Court has held that, to satisfy the injury in fact requirement, a party seeking to invoke the jurisdiction of a federal court must show three things: (1) "an invasion of a legally protected interest," (2) that is "concrete and particularized," and (3) "actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical."12 The following section discusses several types of injuries considered by the Supreme Court in determining whether there is a legally protected interest.
Noting that states are to be given “special solicitude” in the standing analysis because of their stake in protecting their “quasi-sovereign” interests, the Supreme Court held that Massachusetts had demonstrated an economic injury in the recent “global warming” case.17 Massachusetts, other states, cities and private organizations petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. The plaintiffs challenged the Environmental Protection Agency's subsequent decision not to do so on the ground that it lacked statutory authority and if it did, that setting emissions standards at that time was unwise. Relying on declarations by scientists, the Court held that Massachusetts faced “climate change risks” associated with rising sea levels which threatened state-owned coastal lands.18 The Court noted that remediation would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.19 As explained below, the Court found these risks to be sufficiently certain and imminent to support standing.
Sierra Club is significant both for what it permits and what it prohibits. By recognizing that non-economic injury suffices for injury in fact, Sierra Club loosened the requirement of injury in fact. By holding that a specialized interest in a particular issue may not give rise to injury sufficient to challenge unlawful conduct, Sierra Club precluded citizen suits to enforce the law. Subsequent cases expanded these principles.
The Supreme Court recognized the role of carefully pleading injury in Duke Power Company v. Carolina Environmental Study Group.24 Organizations and individuals who lived close to a planned nuclear power plant challenged the constitutionality of federal legislation capping the potential liability of a plant operator for a nuclear disaster. Plaintiffs alleged that, absent the liability cap, the plant could not profitably be built, thereby tying the harm that would result from construction of the plant to the liability cap. Plaintiffs claimed that use of two local lakes to produce steam and to cool the reactor would release small amounts of non-natural radiation and would cause a “sharp increase” in water temperature, which in turn would harm their interest in the recreational use of the lakes.25 Relying upon Sierra Club and SCRAP, the Court held that the injuries were sufficient to confer standing. The Court also held that the plaintiffs satisfied the causation and redressability requirements for standing, discussed below.
Since Duke Power, the Court has been less receptive to claims of environmental standing. In Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation, for example, the plaintiffs challenged the Interior Department’s efforts to review and classify hundreds of parcels of public lands in a manner that might have resulted in their use for mining.26 Relying on affidavits, plaintiffs claimed injury to their recreational and aesthetic enjoyment of lands in the vicinity of public lands that had been opened to mining and oil and gas leasing claims. The Court rejected standing. The public lands at issue were massive tracts of land, only a small portion of which were subject to the challenged decisions. The Court held that an interest in lands that simply lay in the vicinity of areas subject to development was inadequate to confer standing.
The Supreme Court’s more recent decision in Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Environmental Services involved standing under the citizen-suit provision of the Clean Water Act.30 That provision authorizes the federal courts to hear actions for injunctive relief and civil penalties by “a person or persons having an interest which is or may be adversely affected.”31 Laidlaw received a permit to discharge certain pollutants into a river but repeatedly exceeded those limits. South Carolina sued Laidlaw and quickly settled for $100,000 in civil penalties and a promise to comply with the permit. Friends of the Earth subsequently filed suit, seeking additional civil penalties and injunctive relief. The issue before the Court was whether plaintiffs had standing to seek civil penalties after Laidlaw had complied with the discharge permit.
Friends of the Earth offers useful guidance to advocates who need to identify potential plaintiffs and plead their injuries in the complaint or in affidavits. Unlike plaintiffs in National Wildlife Federation, the Friends of the Earth plaintiffs alleged direct injury from the pollutants in question to the particular area in which they wished to recreate.34 Unlike plaintiffs in Defenders of Wildlife, the plaintiffs in Friends of the Earth alleged that they would use the river without the discharges, not that they might someday do so.35 Notwithstanding the Court's opinion in Earth Island Institute, discussed below, Friends of the Earth suggests that the Court remains receptive to finding injury in fact in environmental cases where plaintiffs are able to allege a clear wish to avail themselves of recreational or aesthetic opportunities in a particular, proximate area, but assert that they had not done so because of reasonable concern of harm.
Once a cognizable injury has been asserted, the Supreme Court has long cautioned that the injury in fact be "actual and imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical."52 Our discussion of non-economic injuries above describes the Court's approach to this requirement of standing in several of the earlier cases. A more recent case, Summers v. Earth Island Institute, a closely divided environmental standing decision, follows the logic of Defenders of Wildlife.53 In Earth Island, a number of environmental organizations challenged Forest Service regulations which exempted small timber salvage sale projects from notice, comment and appeal processes set forth in a federal statute. The challenge occurred in the context of one particular sale. After that specific controversy settled, the challenge proceeded generally against the regulations, but the absence of a particular factual context in which the regulation was applied to a specific timber sale doomed standing. The affiant asserted plans to visit national forests in the future, but he failed to allege an intent to visit a particular tract subject to a sale covered by the regulation. The dissent pointed out that there was a "realistic likelihood" that a member of one of the plaintiff organizations would visit an affected tract because the Forest Service conceded that it would engage in thousands of projects exempt from the regulation in the future. The Court, however, rejected reliance on "probabilistic standing" based on a realistic threat of harm. Instead, it insisted that organizational plaintiffs use member affidavits to show that they will imminently use specific tracts.54 Earth Island presents particular challenges in situations in which there is a settlement in an action filed by a plaintiff to challenge application of a legal rule in a particular context as part of a broader effort to overturn the rule generally.
Although the analysis might well have been more forgiving because of its focus on the standing of state,55 the question of "actual and imminent" harm was squarely presented in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency.56 In Massachusetts, the state alleged injury to its coastline from Environmental Protection Agency's failure to regulate the greenhouse gasses that contribute to global warming. Based on scientific evidence presented, the Court found support in the plaintiffs' allegations linking greenhouse gasses to global warming, chiding the dissent as being among the only naysayers on this point.57 It also credited an affidavit from a scientist explaining that rising seas had already encroached on the Massachusetts coastline.58 A useful lesson from Massachusetts, made even more clear in Earth Island, is to be prepared for an anticipated motion to dismiss on standing grounds with credible and detailed affidavits that (1) demonstrate the affiant's clear intention to engage in activities, consistent with past practices, that (2) will, if taken, cause the affiant direct and highly probable injury.
In seeming tension with Monsanto, Clapper v. Amnesty International, squarely addressed the question of future injury and exposed the deep rift in the Court on how to define the degree of certainty required of plaintiffs to establish standing when asserting future injury.62 In Clapper, a group of journalists, attorneys and others challenged as unconstitutional a provision in the amended Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act which authorized the government to engage in electronic surveillance of their sources and clients overseas. The plaintiffs contended that their sources and clients are the kinds of people likely to be subject to such surveillance and, fearing future surveillance, they had undertaken costly measures, such as foreign travel instead of phone calls or e-mail, to communicate with these individuals, or had limited their electronic contacts to maintain their confidentiality.
The Supreme Court’s more recent standing decision in Susan B. Anthony List v. Dreihaus,70 sheds further light on the applicable standard. Susan B. Anthony was a pre-enforcement challenge to an Ohio statute that prohibited “false statements” concerning candidates or public officials during political campaigns for nomination or election. Any person can file a complaint about such statements with a state commission that, in turn, must refer the matter to a county prosecutor if the commission determines by clear and convincing evidence that the false-statement law was violated.
Of relevance here, the Court cited Clapper and held that “[a]n allegation of future injury may suffice if the threatened injury is ‘certainly impending,’ or there is a ‘substantial risk’ that the harm will occur.”71 A showing of either standard may therefore be sufficient. In the pre-enforcement context, that standard may be satisfied when the plaintiff expresses an intent to engage in arguably unlawful speech and there is a “credible threat” of enforcement.72 The Court held that standard was satisfied by the combination of burdensome administrative proceedings before the commission combined with the subsequent threat of criminal prosecution because prior speech, likely to be repeated, had previously been found unlawful in a proceeding before the commission mooted by the withdrawal of the claim.
At least in the context of a pre-enforcement challenge, the Court in Susan B. Anthony appeared to temper Clapper's "certainly impending" language and leave opportunities to continue to argue the viability of the alternative “substantial risk” formulation.
In Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins,73 the Supreme Court considered the concrete and particularized injury prong of the injury-in-fact test in a case claiming that inaccuracies in the results of a "people search engine" inquiry constituted a violation of the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. The Court made very clear that "concrete" and "particularized" are two separate and distinct requirements.
Nonetheless, the Court has sometimes found standing based upon claims of injury that can be described only as generalized or abstract. In Federal Election Commission v. Akins, for example, voters challenged a decision by the Federal Election Commission that a particular organization was not a “political committee.”91 Political committees must make certain disclosures to the Commission; those disclosures, in turn, may be made public. The Court found that plaintiff voters had standing because the voters were not afforded access to information that might assist them in casting their vote, even though all voters could have claimed the same thing.92 Akins might be justified on the grounds that the right of information at issue was statutorily created and that a statute gave “aggrieved” parties a right to challenge the FEC decision. That would put Akins closer to Trafficante than Defenders of Wildlife, discussed above.
In addition to alleging injury in fact, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the injury is fairly traceable to the defendant’s unlawful conduct. In cases in which the government acts against the plaintiff, causation is simple. When, however, governmental action or inaction relates to third parties or only indirectly affects the plaintiff, the question becomes whether the causal connection between action and injury is sufficient to confer standing. The Supreme Court has found standing in some cases notwithstanding an attenuated or uncertain chain of causation.93 At the same time, the Court has denied standing in cases in which the chain seemed both shorter and more certain.94 The Court’s standing causation jurisprudence has been markedly inconsistent and offers few lessons for general application.
The Court first articulated the requirements of causation and redressability in Linda R.S. v. Richard D.95 Plaintiff, an unmarried mother, sued to compel a local prosecutor to enforce the state’s criminal nonsupport statute against the father of her child. She asserted that her injury was the refusal of the child’s father to provide support and claimed that the state’s refusal to enforce the statute against unmarried fathers violated the Equal Protection Clause. The Court held that the mother lacked standing because she did not show that enforcement or threat of enforcement of the statute would cause the father to make child support payments.”96 There was, in short, an insufficient showing that the state’s enforcement policy was the cause of her injury: the non-receipt of child support.
In Warth, low-income plaintiffs who wished to reside in Penfield, New York, challenged zoning restrictions that effectively precluded the construction of low and moderate-income housing within the city. The Court held that the individual plaintiffs lacked standing because they failed to “allege facts from which it reasonably could be inferred that, absent the [city’s] restrictive zoning practices, there is a substantial probability that they would have been able to purchase or lease in Penfield.”97 The ability to purchase a home in Penfield turned on both the willingness of the developer to build homes there without the restrictions and the plaintiffs’ financial capability to do so. Both were regarded as too speculative. Because the plaintiffs failed to establish that city zoning practices caused their injury, they were not allowed to challenge those practices.
Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization, in contrast, demonstrates the hazards of filing a suit without giving due regard to standing.102 a>/ In that case, various individuals and organizations challenged an Internal Revenue Ruling which permitted some hospitals to deny admission to non-emergency indigent patients without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status. Plaintiffs each claimed to have been denied hospital treatment because of their indigence and asserted that the revised revenue ruling “encouraged” and “was encouraging” the continued denial of treatment. Plaintiffs pled that each of the hospitals was tax-exempt and received substantial private contributions.
The Court's recent decision in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency involved a somewhat different concept of causation.105 There, the Environmental Protection Agency conceded a causal link between greenhouse gasses and global warning, but argued that Environmental Protection Agency’s failure to regulate new car emissions contributed very little to the asserted injuries and that regulation would not help global warming because of greenhouse gas emissions from other countries. The Court held that causation is present even if there is a tentative or incremental link between the challenged action (or inaction) and asserted injury.106 The earlier cases measured causation in terms of the degree to which the link between conduct and injury was clear or certain. In a sense, causation was clear and certain in Massachusetts; the issue was, instead, the extent to which the link must be quantitatively significant. On that point, the Court was rather forgiving, although it suggested that a more relaxed standard was in order when a state is the plaintiff.
A corollary to the Supreme Court’s requirement for standing that the injury alleged be fairly traceable to the challenged conduct is the separate requirement that the relief sought must redress the injury. In the great majority of cases the inquiry into causation and redressability are indistinguishable. Thus, in Warth the Court held that there was no reason to suppose that the elimination of exclusionary zoning would enable the plaintiffs to obtain housing in Penfield. In Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization, the Court held that there was no reason to think that revoking the IRS Revenue Ruling at issue would assure that the next ill or injured poor person would be admitted to a hospital. Furthermore, in Allen, the Court held it was entirely speculative that revoking tax-exempt status for allegedly discriminatory private schools would serve to foster public school integration. What is peculiar about the Court’s concern for redressability is the elevation of the question of remedial efficacy to constitutional status.
While the scope of equitable relief to redress unlawful governmental action has long been a matter of controversy, not until City of Los Angeles v. Lyons did the Court clearly articulate the requirement of remedial efficacy as a constitutional component of standing.107 The plaintiff in Lyons sought damages and injunctive relief after being choked by city police officers. He alleged that the city permitted the police department to use unnecessary choke holds indiscriminately. The Court conceded that Lyons had standing to sue for damages.108 However, the Court held that he lacked standing to seek injunctive relief. An injunction would not redress his injury because it was unlikely that he would be arrested and choked again.
Lyons differs dramatically from Warth and Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization. In the earlier cases, the Court’s concern for remedial efficacy was a corollary to the requirement that the plaintiff establish that the injury was fairly traceable to defendant’s unlawful conduct. If the causal link between the defendant’s conduct and the plaintiff’s injury was tenuous, then it followed that injunctive relief against that conduct was unlikely to remedy the injury. Thus, the requirement of remedial efficacy grew out of the focus upon causation; whenever causation was in doubt, so too was remedial efficacy.
The notion of uncertainty in redressability arose in a different context in Defenders of Wildlife. In that case, plaintiffs challenged a regulation that did not require funding agencies to consult with the government before granting funds to projects that might harm endangered species. The Court found that plaintiffs had not demonstrated redressability because the funding agencies were not otherwise bound by any consultation requirement and because the funding agencies supplied only a small percentage of the financing for certain projects.109 Even if those funds were withdrawn, the plaintiffs did not show that the project would be suspended or cause less harm to the endangered species, a showing that would be formidable, if not impossible.
The ability of prospective injunctive relief to remedy past wrongs dealt with in Lyons has echoes in Steel Company v. Citizens for a Better Environment.110 In Steel Company, plaintiff sued a manufacturing firm for past violations of a federal statute requiring users of certain toxic and hazardous chemicals to file forms with the Environmental Protection Agency that detail the name, quantity, and disposal methods of various chemicals. The Environmental Protection Agency alerted the firm that it had failed to file the forms for several years. The firm then did so. Suing the firm for violating the statute, the plaintiff asserted that the company’s failure to file these forms precluded the plaintiff from learning about its operations. The plaintiff sought declaratory and injunctive relief and civil penalties.
The Court found that the plaintiff failed the redressability prong of the standing test. With respect to injunctive relief, the plaintiff sought an order permitting it to inspect the firm’s facilities and records and requiring the firm to submit future forms to the Environmental Protection Agency. The Court held that such relief would not redress the injury previously caused when the firm failed to file the forms. The plaintiff did not allege that such a violation was going to happen again, and, without it, there was no basis for prospective injunctive relief.
Groups may have standing in a representative capacity, in an individual capacity, or in both. A group has standing in a representative capacity when it represents the rights of its members. Such standing is an exception to the general prohibition on third-party standing. An association has standing in an individual capacity (or qua group) when it asserts its own rights as an organization.
With respect to the first element, when an organization asserts standing in a representative capacity, Hunt does not require the organization to allege that it has suffered any injury. Rather, the organization must establish that those whom it represents have suffered an injury sufficient to confer standing.122 The organization need not establish that a substantial number of its members have suffered injury. Injury to a single member will do.123 However, that member must be specifically identified. In Earth Island Institute, the Supreme Court rejected the sufficiency for standing purposes of an assertion that some members of a large membership organization probably will experience harm.124 Instead, submit affidavits from specific members directly affected by the challenged conduct.
Third, Hunt permits representative standing only when neither the claim nor the relief sought require the participation of an injured individual. This element is typically satisfied when the plaintiff association seeks injunctive or declaratory relief generally benefiting the association and its members,132 even when there is a need for some limited participation of association members in fact discovery or at trial.133 The application of the third prong in cases with a conflict among an association’s membership resulted in an interesting split in the circuits.134 Unless Congress eliminates the third element of the Hunt test by statutorily authorizing suit for damages,135 associational claims for damages run afoul of this third prong because the claims require individualized proof of damage and representative standing is therefore inappropriate.136 Because Hunt vests trial courts with some discretion in resolving claims of associational standing, the better practice when group standing appears tenuous is to join at least one named individual as plaintiff in litigation brought by a group asserting associational standing. The presence of an individual with standing should discourage the court—and opposing counsel—from delving deeply into the question of the group’s associational standing.
Given that a group asserting representative standing will fare no better than its individual members in establishing the requisite injury, one can fairly ask why associational standing is worth pursuing. The principal advantage of group standing lies in its use to obtain the benefits of a class action without the bother of class certification. Those benefits include the opportunity to obtain a judgment in favor of everyone adversely affected and to avoid mootness.
Including a representative organization as a plaintiff may justify broader relief than would otherwise be available in a single plaintiff action. It also may avoid mootness of questions tied to the passing stake in the controversy of individual members. Representative claims thereby effectively shift the case and controversy focus from whether a particular individual has a live claim to whether any group member has a live claim. In this sense, representative standing resembles a class action without the problems posed by the requirement of class certification.
Indeed, the Supreme Court recognized the propriety of representative group standing as an appropriate alternative to class action litigation for injunctive relief in International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers.137 In that case, the government argued that the Court should modify Hunt to require representative groups to proceed under Rule 23. Rejecting that argument, the Court reaffirmed Hunt. Representative groups, the Court held, may be superior to an “ad hoc union of injured plaintiffs” proceeding as a class action.138 Because associations are often borne of a desire to vindicate common interests, they are likely to be adequate representatives of their members and “can draw upon a preexisting reservoir of expertise and capital.”139 The Court’s reaffirmation of associational standing suggests the potential value of such standing as an alternative to the vagaries of class certification.
Representative group standing also may enable an individual member who does not wish to appear as a named plaintiff, or does not have the resources to do so, to avoid direct participation in the lawsuit. For a variety of reasons, some individuals are reluctant to sue in their own name. However, their membership in a group can confer representative standing on the group. On the other hand, damages are not available in cases involving associational standing.
An organization may also see representative group standing as a device to strengthen the organization within a community.140 By appearing as the lead plaintiff in a major lawsuit, the group acquires visibility; when it wins, it acquires clout. While these considerations may appear irrelevant to the development of a successful lawsuit, they may matter greatly to a fledgling organization.
Only in limited circumstances, absent economic harm or diminution in membership, do courts uphold the assertion of standing for groups that suffer an injury to their organizational goals.148 While Havens Realty and Arlington Heights, discussed above, expand marginally the opportunity for an organization to establish individual standing based upon injury to its non-economic agenda, they do not undermine Sierra Club, Schlesinger and Allen v. Wright, all of which prohibit standing based upon a general injury to a group’s ideological interests.149 Thus, group standing deriving from injury to the group’s non-economic interests offers only limited possibilities for litigation.
In structuring a claim by a group suing qua group, every effort should be made to identify and plead some kind of economic harm, frustration of a core interest, or membership loss flowing from the challenged conduct. Because combining individual group standing with associational group standing increases the likelihood of success in establishing standing, a group asserting injury to its own interests should, whenever possible, also plead representative standing.
As a matter of judicial self-governance, the Court has also held that prudential considerations counsel against standing even in cases in which the Article III case or controversy requirement has been satisfied. These considerations are motivated by the Court’s reluctance to decide matters of national significance that it regards as being more appropriately resolved by other branches of government and unlikely to protect the interests presented.150 The Court has identified three prudential doctrines: (1) the limitation on taxpayer or generalized grievance standing, discussed above, (2) the zone of interests test and (3) limitations on third-party standing.
The Court developed a three-part test, each prong of which must be satisfied in order to bring third-party claims: “[t]he litigant must have suffered an ‘injury in fact,’ thus giving him or her a ‘sufficiently concrete interest’ in the outcome of the issue in dispute; the litigant must have a close relationship to the third party; and there must exist some hindrance to the third party’s ability to protect his or her own interests.”168 As this test has been applied, however, the Court has found standing even in cases in which the second or third prong has not been clearly established.
With respect to the second prong, the Supreme Court has not articulated specific standards for the degree of the closeness of the relationship between the plaintiff and the third party whose rights are asserted, or the nature of the relationship which satisfies this criterion. Nonetheless, a number of cases offer significant guidance.
At least two justices have suggested that the Supreme Court revisit and clarify the law of third-party standing. In Miller v. Albright, a woman born abroad and out of wedlock to an American father and a foreign mother challenged, along with her father, a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act that created different citizenship requirements for those born abroad of an alien father and American mother as opposed to those born abroad to an alien mother and American father.188 The lawsuit asserted that the father’s equal protection rights were violated. Nonetheless, the district court dismissed the father’s claim for lack of standing. The father did not appeal.
The most sensible approach to litigation in the face of uncertainty is to avoid third-party standing problems by joining appropriate additional plaintiffs. Creating a complex and unnecessary obstacle to the assertion of a claim by attempting to have one plaintiff assert the rights of others makes no sense. Simply join representative individuals whose rights are at issue as named plaintiffs.
Third-party standing rules are more clearly developed in the context of overbreadth claims. The prototypical overbreadth claim arises when regulation of activity protected by the First Amendment is challenged on the ground that the regulation sweeps substantial protected as well as unprotected conduct or expression within its prohibition. When plaintiff is engaging in expression clearly subject to permissible regulation under a properly drawn restraint, the overbreadth challenge raises third-party standing issues.
The leading case is Secretary of State of Maryland v. Joseph H. Munson Company190 The Court held that a plaintiff invoking third-party standing in an overbreadth case must establish only that he had suffered injury in fact and that he would adequately frame the issues.191 To demonstrate injury in fact in an overbreadth case, the plaintiff must demonstrate “a genuine threat of enforcement” of the statute against his future activities.192 Underlying the special third-party standing rule for overbreadth cases is the risk that the absent party whose rights are at issue may refrain from the protected activity rather than sue to vindicate First Amendment rights. Should that happen, society loses the views of those who are silenced.
1. Summers v. Earth Island Institute, 555 U.S. 488, 492-93 (2009); DaimlerChrysler Corporation v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332, 340-41 (2006).
2. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992); see also Summers, 555 U.S. at 493.
3. Association of Data Processing Service Organizations Incorporated v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 151 (1970).
4. United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675, 2687 (2013) (quoting Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204 (1962)). See, e.g., Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1 (2004) (relying on principles of prudential standing to deny standing to student’s father who sought to challenge requirement that his daughter recite Pledge of Allegiance, when father’s right to act on his daughter’s behalf was founded on disputed issues of state family law).
5. The Supreme Court examined the distinction between Article III and prudential limitations on standing in the unusual context presented in Windsor, the recent case that invalidated the Defense of Marriage Act. There, the Supreme Court held that the United States had standing to appeal a trial court’s decision to require it to pay a tax refund although it refused to defend the statute on which it had denied and continued to deny the request for refund. The Court further held that the importance of the issues, the prospect of time-consuming and costly litigation over DOMA were the appeal dismissed, and the presentation by a Congressional group that intervened to support the constitutionality of DOMA counseled against dismissing the appeal on prudential grounds. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2684–89.
6. DaimlerChrysler, 547 U.S. at 342, n.3; FW/PBS Incorporated v. Dallas, 493 U.S. 215, 231 (1990). An intervenor of right must have standing to pursue relief different from that sought by a party with standing. Town of Chester v. Laroe Estates, Inc., 137 S. Ct. 1645, 1651 (2017).
7. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 561. To discharge that burden, the party invoking federal jurisdiction (here, intervenors) must do more than simply allege "nonobvious harm." Wittman v. Personhuballah, No. 14-1504 (U.S. May 23, 2016).
8. Davis v. Federal Election Commission, 554 U.S. 724, 734 (2008).
9. While the Supreme Court reviews standing sua sponte “where [it] [has been erroneously assumed below,” it does not examine standing “simply to reach an issue for which standing has been denied below,” a conclusion not challenged in the appellant’s petition for certiorari. Adarand Constructors Incorporated v. Mineta, 534 U.S. 103, 110 (2001). By contrast, courts of appeal are obliged to examine standing under all circumstances. See, e.g., Wyoming Outdoor Council v. U.S. Forest Service, 165 F.3d 43, 47 (D.C. Cir. 1999).
10. Monsanto Company v. Geerston Seed Farms, 130 S. Ct. 2743, 2754 (2010) (plaintiffs must demonstrate standing to pursue each form of relief sought); Davis, 554 U.S. at 734; City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 105 (1983).
11. DaimlerChrysler, 547 U.S. at 353.
12. Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540, 1548 (2016) (quoting Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560 (1992)).
13. Clinton v. New York, 524 U.S. 417, 432 (1998). See also United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013) (government had standing to appeal order to pay tax refund despite its refusal to defend basis for that refusal); Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States, 529 U.S. 765 (2000) (relator in qui tam action has standing to challenge injury suffered by government because Congress assigned relator an entitlement to a percentage of any monetary recovery).
15. Clinton, 524 U.S. at 432-33.
17. Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, 549 U.S. 497, 520 (2007).
20. Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972).
21. See Sierra Club v. Morton, 348 F. Supp. 219 (N.D. Cal. 1972).
22. United States v. Students Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedures (SCRAP), 412 U.S. 669 (1973).
23. Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation, 497 U.S. 871, 889 (1990).
24. Duke Power Company v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, 438 U.S. 59 (1978).
25. Id. at 73. The Supreme Court suggested that the threat of a core meltdown and the present consequences in terms of personal anxiety and decreased property values of that threat were too speculative to confer standing.
26. Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation, 497 U.S. 871 (1990).
27. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992).
28. Id. at 563 (citations omitted).
29. Id. at 564. The Supreme Court also disposed of alternative theories asserting standing by those who use any part of a “contiguous ecosystem,” by those interested in seeing endangered animals, and by those with a professional interest in animals. Id. at 565-66.
30. Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, 528 U.S. 167 (2000).
31. Friends of the Earth, 528 U.S. at 174, quoting Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. §§ 1365(a), (g). Even the dissent declined to conclude that this statute was unconstitutional in the sense that the citizen-suit provision in the Endangered Species Act was in Defenders of Wildlife.
32. Friends of the Earth, 528 U.S. at 183.
33. Id. at 184 (citing Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 564).
36. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 576-78.
37. Id. at 578 (quoting Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 500 (1975)).
39. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in First American Financial Corporation v. Edwards, 610 F.3d 514 (9th Cir. 2010), which presented a question whether a plaintiff has standing to challenge a violation of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act in the absence of an allegation that the alleged violation resulted in an overcharge, but later dismissed it as improvidently granted. First American Financial Corporation v. Edwards, 132 S. Ct. 2536 (2012).
40. Fair Housing Act of 1968, 42 U.S.C. §§ 3601-3612 .
41. Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 409 U.S. 205 (1972).
42. Id. at 208. Following Trafficante, the Supreme Court later held that cities and homeowners had standing to challenge racial steering practices, Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 109-15 (1979) and that “testers,” individuals posing as prospective buyers or renters, had standing to sue for racially motivated misrepresentations that housing was unavailable. Havens Realty Corporation v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 372-75 (1982).
43. Cf. Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States, 529 U.S. 765, 773 (2000) (concluding that realtor has standing under False Claims Act as the Act may be regarded as partially assigning the United States’ damage claims to third parties). For an interesting recent case holding that emotional injury is not cognizable for standing, over a spirited dissent, see Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches v. U.S. Navy, 534 F.3d 756 (D.C. Cir. 2008).
44. Thompson v. North American Stainless, 131 S. Ct. 863, 869-70 (2011).
45. Id. at 870 (employee fired after his fiancee filed an Equal Employment Opportunity claim can sue for retaliation under Title VII).
46. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 , 572 (1992).
47. Id. at 573 n.7. The example used by the Supreme Court involved one who was living next to a proposed dam and had standing to challenge the failure to prepare an environmental impact statement even though there was no guarantee that such a statement would result in the dam not being built. See also Summers v. Earth Island Institute, 555 U.S. 488, 496 (2009).
48. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 573 n.8; Earth Island Institute, 555 U.S. at 496-97. Compare Center for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Department of Interior, 563 F.3d 466, 479 (D.C. Cir. 2009) (finding standing) with New York Regional Interconnect Incorporated v. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 634 F.3d 581, 587 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (finding standing) and Center for Law and Education v. U.S. Department of Education, 396 F.3d 1152 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (rejecting standing). Courts of appeal decisions applying “procedural rights” standing include Wyoming Outdoor Council v. U.S. Forest Service, 165 F.3d 43, 51 (D.C. Cir. 1999) (holding that plaintiff may sue for the denial of procedural rights in the Forest Service’s grant of authority to drill on federal lands even though there was “no certainty” that the drilling would take place), and Moreau v. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 982 F.2d 556, 564 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (plaintiffs had standing to contest the agency’s failure to give them notice of proceedings and to hold an evidentiary hearing regarding the construction of a natural gas pipeline notwithstanding the plaintiffs’ failure to show that such pre-deprivation safeguards would have changed the outcome). See also Salmon Spawning and Recovery Alliance v. Gutierrez, 545 F.3d 1220 (9th Cir. 2008); Defenders of Wildlife v. Environmental Protection Agency, 420 F.3d 946, 957-58 (9th Cir. 2005); Yesler Terrace Community Council v. Cisneros, 37 F.3d 442, 446-47 (9th Cir. 1994); Florida Audubon Society v. Bentsen, 94 F.3d 658, 664 (D.C. Cir. 1996); Banks v. Secretary of the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, 997 F.2d 231, 238-39 (7th Cir. 1993) (plaintiffs eligible for Medicaid have standing to challenge Medicaid agency’s failure to give notice and hearing before denying reimbursement claims).
49. See, e.g. Bensman v. U.S. Forest Service, 408 F.3d 945 (7th Cir. 2005) (rejecting, in Appeals Reform Act case, informational injury as a sufficient substantive interest to warrant procedural injury standing); but see WildEarth Guardians v. Salazar, 859 F. Supp. 2d 83, 92 (D.D.C. 2012) ("To establish informational standing, a plaintiff must (1) identify a statute that, on plaintiff's reading, directly requires the defendant to disclose information that the plaintiff has a right to obtain, (2) show that it has been denied the information to which it is entitled, and (3) provide a credible claim that the information would be helpful to it.") (citing FEC v. Akins, 524 U.S. 11, 21 (1998)).
50. Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, 549 U.S. 497 (2007).
52. Earth Island Institute, 555 U.S. at 493.
55. See Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Department of Interior, 563 F.3d 466, 476-77 (D.C. Cir. 2009) (rejecting traditional standing in challenge to approval of offshore oil and gas leasing for failure to account to climate change on Outer Continental Shelf areas).
56. Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, 549 U.S. 497 (2007).
57. Id. at 523 n.21.
59. Monsanto Company, 130 S. Ct. 2743.
62. Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, 133 S. Ct. 1138 (2013).
69. Clapper, 133 S. Ct. at 1150 n.5.
70. Susan B. Anthony List v. Dreihaus, 134 S. Ct. 2334 (2014).
73. Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540 (2016).
74. Id. at 1548 (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560 n.1).
75. Spokeo, Inc., 136 S. Ct. at 1548.
77. DaimlerChrysler Corporation v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332, 341-46 (2006), in which the Court rejected state and municipal taxpayer standing for the same reasons that it had done so in prior federal taxpayer standing cases. The only area in which the Supreme Court has approved of taxpayer standing is in certain suits challenging spending on grounds that it violates the Establishment Clause. Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83 (1968), which established this exception has between frequently distinguished and narrowed. See Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, 131 S. Ct. 1436 (2011) (Arizona taxpayers have no standing to challenge law permitting tax credits for contributions to organizations that provide scholarships to students attending private and parochial schools, distinguishing tax credits from government expenditures); Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation, 551 U.S. 587 (2007) (finding taxpayers have no standing to challenge conferences sponsored by the President's Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Centers because those offices were funded from general Executive Branch appropriations, distinguishing Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83 (1968), in which plaintiffs challenged distribution of funds to religious schools pursuant to Congressional spending power legislation); Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U.S. 589 (1988); Grand Rapids School District v. Ball, 473 U.S. 373 (1985), overruled in part on other grounds by Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203 (1997); Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83 (1968). In DaimlerChrysler, the Court expressly refused to expand this exception to Commerce Clause challenges to state tax or spending decisions. DaimlerChrysler, 547 U.S. at 347-48.
78. United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166 (1974).
79. Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208 (1974).
80. Richardson, 418 U.S. at 172.
81. Schlesinger, 418 U.S. at 226.
82. Clapper, 133 S. Ct. 1138.
83. Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490 (1975).
85. See, e.g., Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811, 820 n.3 (1997).
86. Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737 (1984).
87. Id. at 753-59. The Supreme Court found that the latter claim stated a cognizable injury – a reduced ability to receive an integrated education. However, the Court held that the plaintiffs failed to show that revocation of tax exemption of discriminatory private schools would enhance the cause of integration. Such a showing required several layers of speculation: how many schools actually received favorable tax treatment, the extent to which they discriminated, whether they would change any policies if their tax exempt status were revoked, whether white parents would leave the school if the school changed its policies, and whether sufficient numbers of white students would leave and attend public schools to meaningfully alter the racial balance.
89. Hollingsworth v. Perry, 133 S. Ct. 2652 (2013).
90. Id. at 2662-63. In Lance v. Coffman, the Supreme Court similarly found that four Colorado voters lacked standing to challenge a provision of the Colorado Constitution interpreted to permit a redistricting plan on the grounds that it violated the Elections Clause in the Federal Constitution. The Court viewed the complaint as only asserting an injury that the government was not following the law. Lance v. Coffman, 549 U.S. 437 (2007) (per curiam).
91. Federal Election Commission v. Akins, 524 U.S. 11 (1998).
92. Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, 549 U.S. 497 (2007) presented a similar issue: everyone is affected by global warming. The Court, however, held that just because climate risks are "widely shared" does not minimize Massachusetts' interest in the litigation. Massachusetts, 549 U.S. at 522 (citing Akins). For similar cases, see Heckler v. Mathews, 465 U.S. 728, 739 (1984) (men have standing to challenge constitutionality of social security statute that treated men and women differently even though prevailing could not possibly help them); Havens Realty Corporation. v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 373-74 (1982) (tester has standing to challenge discrimination). For an explanation why the Supreme Court finds standing in some cases presenting generalized grievances and not others, see Richard Pierce, Administrative Law Treatise § 16.4 at 1152-53 (5th ed. 2010).
93. Duke Power Company v. Carolina Study Group, 438 U.S. 59 (1978); United States v. Students Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedures (SCRAP), 412 U.S. 669 (1973); see also Bryant v. Yellen, 447 U.S. 352 (1980).
94. Professor Pierce opines that these cases reflect the Supreme Court’s use of causation to preclude review of cases that pose difficult justiciability issues on other grounds. Pierce, supra note 73 , § 16.5 at 1165-66.
95. Linda R.S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S. 614 (1973).
97. Warth, 422 U.S. at 504.
98. Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corporation, 429 U.S. 252 (1977).
101. Environmental litigants in Duke Power Company v. Carolina Study Group, 438 U.S. 59 (1978) also overcame Warth’s stringent causation requirement. By introducing the testimony of industry representatives before congressional committees expressing their unwillingness to develop nuclear power without a liability cap, plaintiffs established that, but for the cap, the plants would likely not be built. When the utility company asserted it could proceed without the cap, plaintiffs introduced the company’s letter to Congress, which said that its suppliers and contractors would not proceed without the cap. Thus, plaintiffs demonstrated that the cap caused the aesthetic injuries of which they complained.
102. Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Organization, 426 U.S. 26 (1976).
104. Friends of the Earth, 528 U.S. at 183 (2000). In an interesting American with Disabilities Act case, the Ninth Circuit held that a plaintiff who resided several hundred miles from a convenience store, but who intended to return to the store when it became accessible had standing. Doran v. 7-Eleven, Incorporated, 524 F.3d 1034, 1041 (9th Cir. 2008).
105. Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, 549 U.S. 497 (2007).
107. City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95 (1983).
108. While Lyons and its progeny do not bar damage claims, those claims frequently are of only uncertain value. Individual defendants assert the defense of qualified immunity, state agencies assert immunity under the Eleventh Amendment, and local governmental bodies assert that the challenged action is not attributable to the governmental body. See generally the discussion of immunities and municipal liability in Chapter 8 of this MANUAL.
109. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 568-71 (1992).
110. Steel Company v. Citizens for a Better Environment, 523 U.S. 83 (1998).
111. Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, 549 U.S. 497 (2007). Again, caution is warranted because the apparently unique standing analysis applicable when states are plaintiffs.
114. With regard to redressability, the Court rejected the notion that plaintiffs lacked standing to seek a civil money penalty simply because the penalty was to be paid to the government rather than to them. The Court deferred to Congress’ judgment that civil penalties deter unlawful conduct. Because civil penalties were seen as "likely" to discourage violators from continuing their misconduct and deter future violations, plaintiffs would achieve redress even though they would not pocket the money.
115. Pierce, supra note 73, §16.7; see also Federal Election Commission v. Akins, 524 U.S. 11 (1998); Havens Realty Corporation v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363 (1982); and Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 409 U.S. 205 (1975) discussed infra.
116. Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States, 529 U.S. 765, 773 (2000).
117. Pierce, supra note 82, §16.7. This may explain cases like Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490 (1975), Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U.S. 26 (1976); Linda R.S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S. 614 (1973), and certain taxpayer standing cases.
118. Clapper, 133 S. Ct. 1138.
119. Hunt v. Washington Apple Advertising Commission, 432 U.S. 333 (1977).
120. Id. at 343; see also Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, 528 U.S. 167, 181 (2000) (association successfully demonstrates standing of members through declarations).
121. United Food and Commercial Workers v. Brown Group, 517 U.S. 544, 556-57 (1996) (holding that the prong “may guard against the hazard of litigating a case to the damages stage only to find plaintiff lacking detailed records or the evidence necessary to show the harm with sufficient specificity. And it may hedge against any risk that the damages recovered by the association will fail to find their way into the pockets of the members on whose behalf injury is claimed”).
122. See, e.g., Northeastern Florida Chapter of the Associated General Contractors v. City of Jacksonville, 508 U.S. 656, 666 (1993) (injury-in-fact requirement in equal protection case does not require plaintiff to prove that she would have obtained benefit in absence of challenged barrier).
123. United Food and Commercial Workers, 517 U.S. at 555; ACLU of Ohio Foundation v. Ashbrook, 375 F.3d 484, 489-90 (6th Cir. 2004) (identifying single member who appeared in a courthouse to challenge display there on Establishment Clause grounds); Consumer Federation of America v. Federal Communications Commission, 348 F.3d 1009, 1011-12 (D.C. Cir. 2003). Examples of a case in which a plaintiff could have identified an injured member, but failed to so are Disability Rights Wisconsin v. Walworth County Board of Supervisors, 522 F.3d 796, 802-03 (7th Cir. 2008) and National Alliance for the Mentally Ill v. Board of County Commissioners, 376 F.3d 1292, 1296 (11th Cir. 2004).
124. Earth Island Institute, 555 U.S. at 497-98.
125. Hunt v. Washington Apple Advertising Commission, 432 U.S. 333, 342 (1977).
127. Gettman v. Drug Enforcement Administration, 290 F.3d 430, 435 (D.C. Cir. 2002); Fund Democracy, LLC v. S.E.C., 278 F.3d 21, 26 (D.C. Cir. 2002).
128. In Hunt, a state agency whose members were voted on by apple growers was found to have standing. Hunt, 432 U.S. at 344. Even though not a membership entity, the agency served the interests of a definable group of people, possessed “indicia” of membership organizations, and had a financial nexus with its constituents. See also Oregon Advocacy Center v. Mink, 322 F.3d 1101, 1110 (9th Cir. 2003) (federally authorized protection and advocacy organization would have standing to sue on behalf of disabled constituents as an association, despite not having membership, if one constituent had standing); Doe v. Stincer, 175 F.3d 879, 885 (11th Cir. 1999) (same).
129. Gettman, 290 F.3d at 435 (magazine with readership lacks associational standing); Fund Democracy, 278 F.3d at 26 (one-person business that represents an informal consortium of groups lacks standing); Association for Retarded Citizens of Dallas v. Dallas County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Board of Trustees, 19 F.3d 241 (5th Cir. 1994) (public interest advocacy group lacks standing based solely on resources directed toward representing disabled persons in response to actions of another party).
130. See, e.g., Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund v. U.S. Department of Agriculture, 415 F.3d 1078, 1103-1104 (9th Cir. 2005) (nonprofit association representing cattle producers on international trade and market issues does not have standing to bring National Environmental Policy Act claims).
131. Humane Society of the United States v. Hodel, 840 F.2d 45, 58 (D.C. Cir. 1988). See Building and Construction Trades Council of Buffalo v. Downtown Development, Incorporated, 448 F.3d 138, 146-49 (2d Cir. 2006).
132. Pennell v. City of San Jose, 485 U.S. 1, 7 (1988); International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America v. Brock, 477 U.S. 274 (1986); Hospital Council of Western Pennsylvania v. City of Pittsburgh, 949 F.2d 83, 89 (3d Cir. 1991).
133. Borrero v. United HealthCare of New York, Incorporated, 610 F.3d 1296, 1306 (11th Cir. 2010); Pharmaceutical Care Management Association v. Rowe, 429 F.3d 294, 310-311 (1st Cir. 2005); Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society v. Green Spring Health Services, Incorporated, 280 F.3d 278, 283-87 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 881 (2002); Retired Chicago Police Association v. City of Chicago, 7 F.3d. 584, 603 (7th Cir. 1993); Hospital Council, 949 F.2d at 89.
134. Retired Chicago Police Association, 7 F.3d at 603-07 (surveying circuit split); see also National B. Edmonds, Comment, Associational Standing for Organizations with Internal Conflicts of Interest, 69 U. CHI. L. REV. 351 (2002).
135. United Food and Commercial Workers v. Brown Group, 517 U.S. 544, 554-59 (1996).
136. See Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 515 (1975); Bano v. Union Carbide Corporation, 361 F.3d 696, 714 (2d Cir. 2004) (noting that no Supreme Court or circuit court case has approved of representational standing in cases seeking monetary relief, Indian organizations lack standing to bring damage claims for Bhopal-related injuries on behalf of members).
137. International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers, 477 U.S. at 274.
140. Legal Services Corporation (LSC) restrictions permit the representation of groups, corporations, and associations which meet financial eligibility requirements. 45 C.F.R. § 1611.6(a) .
141. That injury can be one defined by Congress. For example, in Addiction Specialists v. Township of Hampton, 411 F.3d 399, 405-07 (3d Cir. 2005), a methadone clinic had standing to pursue American with Disabilities Act and Rehabilitation Act claims for injunctive and compensatory relief based on its association with its clients. See also Innovative Health Systems, Incorporated v. City of White Plains, 117 F.3d 37, 47 (2d Cir. 1997).
142. Representative and organizational standing must be distinguished. See Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization v. Giuliani, 143 F.3d 639, 649 (2d Cir. 1998) (group had standing because of economic harm to the organization, but organization did not have representative standing to seek damages for individual members).
143. This economic harm may take the form of expenditures that would not be required but for the challenged action. See Fair Housing Council v. Roommate.com, LLC, 666 F.3d 1216, 1219 (9th Cir. 2012); Mid-Hudson Catskill Rural Migrant Ministry, Incorporated v. Fine Host Corporation, 418 F.3d 168, 174-75 (2d Cir. 2005); Smith v. Pacific Properties and Development Corporation, 358 F.3d 1097, 1105-06 (9th Cir. 2004) (reversing dismissal of complaint by advocacy group for the disabled which alleged that it diverted resources to monitor and publicize alleged discrimination), cert. denied, 543 U.S. 869 (2004).
144. See, e.g., NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 459-60 (1958); Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 157-59 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., Douglas, J., and Burton, J., concurring); M.O.C.H.A. Society v. City of Buffalo, 199 F. Supp. 2d 40, 46 (W.D.N.Y. 2002) (finding associational standing based on loss of membership); Wyoming Timber Industry Association v. U.S. Forest Service, 80 F. Supp. 2d 1245, 1253 (D. Wyo. 2000) (validating organizational standing based on economic harm to a trade association); but see Minnesota Federation of Teachers v. Randall, 891 F.2d 1354, 1359 (8th Cir. 1989) (holding that fear of potential loss of union membership is insufficient to confer organizational standing).
145. See Friends of Animals v. Salazar, 626 F. Supp. 2d 102, 111-13 (D.D.C. 2009).
146. Membership rolls, for example, may be discoverable depending on whether “good cause” exists for a protective order pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c). See generally Courier-Journal v. Marshall, 828 F.2d 361, 364-67 (6th Cir. 1987) (affirming the district court’s use of discretion in fashioning a protective order that recognizes the associational rights of nonparty members of the Ku Klux Klan).
147. Failure to cite to such record evidence in the district court waives the assertion of organizational standing on appeal. National Alliance for the Mentally Ill v. Board of County Commissioners, 376 F.3d 12192, 1295-96 (2004).
148. But see American Canoe Association v. City of Louisa Water and Sewer Commission, 389 F.3d 536 (6th Cir. 2004) (organizations have standing to challenge failure to comply with the reporting and monitoring that the Clean Water Act requires because lack of such information impaired organizations’ missions to monitor and report on environmental issues).
149. See Havens Realty Corporation v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 372-80 (1982) (organization dedicated to open housing has standing to challenge realty company’s discriminatory practices because they injured the group’s ability to advance its purposes and caused a diversion of resources responding to complaints about the company).
150. See Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1, 11-12 (2004) (invoking principles of prudential limitations to reject standing of father to challenge constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance on behalf of his daughter when his right to do so was clouded by unsettled issues of state family law). Compare Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2686-89 (holding that prudential considerations did not persuade Court's consideration of constitutionality of DOMA when intervenor presented adversarial argument and interests of thousands of people were at issue).
151. Association of Data Processing Service Organizations, Incorporated v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150 (1970).
152. Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, 162 (1997).
153. Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498 (1975).
154. See, e.g., Bennett, 520 U.S. at 164 n.2.
155. Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 702.
156. Bennett, 520 U.S. at 163. See, e.g. Thinket Ink Information Resources, Incorporated v. Sun Microsystems, Incorporated, 368 F.3d 1053 (9th Cir. 2004) (minority-owned business falls within zone of interests of 42 U.S.C. § 1981 if it suffers racial discrimination or has an imputed racial identity).
157. Block v. Community Nutrition Institute, 467 U.S. 340 (1984).
158. The Block Court unanimously held that consumers of milk lacked standing to challenge milk marketing orders because there was evidence of congressional intent to deny consumers a right to obtain judicial review of such orders. Id. at 347-48.
160. Clarke v. Security Industry Association, 479 U.S. 388, 399-400 (1987).
161. Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians v. Patchuk, 132 S. Ct. 2199, 2210-12 (2012).
162. National Credit Union Administration v. First National Bank and Trust Company, 522 U.S. 479 (1998).
163. Air Courier Conference v. American Postal Workers Union, 498 U.S. 517, 524-25 (1991).
164. The Supreme Court recently distinguished third-party standing cases from cases in which an assignee of a legal claim files suit. In such actions, the assignee asserts their own legal rights, not those of another, even when the assignee has promised to repay the assignor money recovered in the litigation. Sprint Communications v. APCC Services, 128 S. Ct. 2531 (2008).
165. See United Food and Commercial Workers Union v. Brown Group, 517 U.S. 544, 557 (1996).
166. See Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U.S. 106, 114-15 (1976); Erwin Chemerinsky, Federal Jurisdiction 84-91 (5th ed. 2007).
167. Kowalski v. Tesmer, 543 U.S. 125, 129 (2004) (attorneys lack standing to challenge state process for appointing appellate counsel for indigent defendants who plead guilty).
168. Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400, 411 (1991) (citations omitted); see Kowalski, 125 S. Ct. at 567.
169. See Singleton, 428 U.S. at 119 (doctor suffers loss of Medicaid reimbursement income).
170. See Powers, 499 U.S. at 411 (discriminatory use of peremptory challenges harms criminal defendant).
171. U.S. Department of Labor v. Triplett, 494 U.S. 715, 720-21 (1990). In its most recent third-party standing case, the Supreme Court held that criminal defense attorneys did not have third-party standing to assert claims of future clients. Kowalski, 543 U.S. at 130-31.
172. Triplett, 494 U.S. at 720. This principle might have been applied in Kowalski, but was not.
173. Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190 (1976).
174. Id. at 195. Craig’s sweep is potentially quite broad. The articulated justification for the decision admits of no logical limit, and how the third prong, discussed infra, was satisfied is difficult to see. The Supreme Court observed that the law banned the sale, not the consumption, of 3.2 percent beer, but this hardly seems a substantial barrier blocking young men from challenging the statute.
175. Virginia v. American Booksellers Association, 484 U.S. 383, 392 (1988).
176. Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U.S. 678, 682-83 (1977); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 443 (1972); but see Tileston v. Ullman, 318 U.S. 44, 45-46 (1943) (denying standing of doctor to challenge laws prohibiting use of contraceptives on behalf of patients).
177. Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400 (1991).
182. Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Company, 500 U.S. 614, 629 (1991).
183. Campbell v. Louisiana, 523 U.S. 392, 397-98 (1998).
184. Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249 (1953).
185. Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972).
187. Kowalski v. Tesmer, 543 U.S. 125, 131-32 (2004). Such a defendant subsequently did so successfully. Halbert v. Michigan, 545 U.S. 605 (2005) (due process and equal protection clauses require appointment of counsel for defendants convicted on guilty pleas in applying for leave to appeal in intermediate court).
188. Miller v Albright, 523 U.S. 420 (1998).
189. Id. at 451 n.1; see also Kowalski, 543 U.S. at 134-36 (Thomas, J., concurring).
190. Secretary of State v. Joseph H. Munson Company , 467 U.S. 947 (1984).
191. Anyone who has suffered injury is unlikely to be unable to frame the issues adequately. Thus, the only real requirement is the irreducible minimum requirement of injury in fact.
192. City of Houston v. Hill, 482 U.S. 451, 459 (1987) (quoting Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U.S. 452, 475 (1974)). Thus, in Hill, an individual who had been arrested four times but never convicted under an ordinance prohibiting interference with a police officer had standing to seek to enjoin future enforcement on the ground of overbreadth.

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