Opinion ID: 379028
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: General Law of Standing

Text: 6 The question of standing is whether the litigant is entitled to have the court decide the merits of the dispute or of particular issues. Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2205, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975). In general, a plaintiff has standing to sue if he, or those he properly represents, have been injured in fact by the defendant's conduct (Data Processing Service v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 152, 90 S.Ct. 827, 829, 25 L.Ed.2d 184 (1970)), and meet such other conditions on who may sue as Congress may have legislated. 7 Injury in fact means concrete and certain harm. It may be the out-of-pocket cost to a business of obeying a new rule of government (Hunt v. Washington Apple Advertising Comm'n., 432 U.S. 333, 97 S.Ct. 2434, 53 L.Ed.2d 383 (1977)), or the unwanted result of the government rule whether or not a pecuniary loss is sustained. Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 97 S.Ct. 555, 50 L.Ed.2d 450 (1977). But the harm must be certain to happen. There must also be reason to think that the harm can be redressed by relief the court can grant. Such injury in fact is the one constant element in the judicial statements about standing. 8 The essence of the standing inquiry is whether the parties seeking to invoke the court's jurisdiction have alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions. Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204 (, 82 S.Ct. 691, 703, 7 L.Ed.2d 663) (1962). As refined by subsequent reformulation, this requirement of a personal stake has come to be understood to require not only a distinct and palpable injury, to the plaintiff, Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 501 (, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2206, 45 L.Ed.2d 343) (1975), but also a fairly traceable causal connection between the claimed injury and the challenged conduct. Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 261 (, 97 S.Ct. 555, 561, 50 L.Ed.2d 450) (1977). 9 Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Env. Study Group, 438 U.S. 59, 72, 98 S.Ct. 2620, 2630, 57 L.Ed.2d 595 (1978). 10 Because the NCAA challenges the legality of agency action, it must satisfy not only the constitutional requirement of injury in fact, but also the standing requirement expressed in section 10(a) of the Administrative Procedure Act (5 U.S.C. § 702). Section 10(a) states, inter alia : 11 A person suffering legal wrong because of agency action, or adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute, is entitled to judicial review thereof. 12 The wording of the statute is in the disjunctive. A plaintiff has standing to obtain judicial review of agency action if he has suffered a legal wrong, or, if not, he has been otherwise adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute. 13 The courts have long since agreed that a legal wrong is an invasion of a legal right, that is, one of property, one arising out of contract, one protected against tortious invasion, or one founded on a statute which confers a privilege. Tennessee Power Co. v. T. V. A., 306 U.S. 118, 137-138, 59 S.Ct. 366, 369, 83 L.Ed. 543 (1939). 14 The adversely affected language, on the other hand, has received different interpretations. The D. C. Circuit held in Kansas City Power & Light Company v. McKay, 225 F.2d 924, 932 (D.C.Cir.1955), cert. denied, 350 U.S. 884, 76 S.Ct. 137, 100 L.Ed. 780, that the plaintiff must be able to refer to a statute that uses the terms aggrieved or adversely affected and show that he is included within those terms. But in Data Processing Service v. Camp, supra, the Supreme Court eschewed a literal reading of the phrase adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute and held that it means arguably within the zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the statute . . . in question. 397 U.S. at 153, 90 S.Ct. at 830. Thus, unless the legislative history shows the plaintiff to be clearly not within the statute's zone of interests, and it rarely does, a court should demand no more than a sensible relation between some subject of the statute and the plaintiff's interest in the outcome of the litigation. Tax Analysts & Advocates v. Blumenthal, 566 F.2d 130, 142, 143 n. 80 (D.C.Cir.1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1086, 98 S.Ct. 1280, 55 L.Ed.2d 791. 15 In our view, then, the NCAA's amended complaint must show: A legal wrong done to the NCAA or its members, or a sensible relationship between any provision of Title IX and any one of the goals of this suit (these, as we see them, are academic liberty in intercollegiate sports, the avoidance of money costs associated with obeying the HEW regulations, and others); an injury that the District Court can redress; and an injury that is certain and not speculative.