Opinion ID: 501787
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: A Brief Overview of Standing Doctrine

Text: 82 Standing jurisprudence is a highly case-specific endeavor, turning on the precise allegations of the parties seeking relief. Compare Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972) (denying standing to an environmental organization challenging development of a ski resort in a national forest because it failed to identify specific injury to members) with United States v. SCRAP, 412 U.S. 669, 93 S.Ct. 2405, 37 L.Ed.2d 254 (1973) (finding pleadings alleged facts which, if true, would establish standing by environmental group to challenge Interstate Commerce Commission's allowance of rail freight increase which identified members whose recreational and aesthetic interests would be allegedly injured because rate increase would lead to heightened use of raw, instead of recycled, scrap metal). Thus, in this case, rather than passing a composite judgment on the standing of NWF with regard to the mass of regulations before us, we evaluate the nature of NWF's objection to each challenged regulation in order to determine whether NWF can contest these measures in court. 83 We begin our standing inquiry by recalling some principles of special relevance to this case. Standing involves both limitations imposed by the case or controversy requirement of Article III of the Constitution and prudential limits on its exercise. Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2205, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1974). 7 The Supreme Court has construed the constitutional elements of the standing requirement as embracing three separate, yet necessarily intertwined components: The party invoking the court's authority must demonstrate (1) some actual or threatened injury that (2) fairly can be traced to the challenged action and (3) is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision. Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, 454 U.S. 464, 472, 102 S.Ct. 752, 758, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982) (quoting Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 99 S.Ct. 1601, 60 L.Ed.2d 66 (1979), and Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Org., 426 U.S. 26, 38, 41, 96 S.Ct. 1917, 1924, 1925-26, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976), respectively). See also Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 3324, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984). 84 The first of these elements, that a party has been or will in fact be perceptibly harmed by the challenged agency action, see United States v. SCRAP, 412 U.S. at 688, 93 S.Ct. at 2416, is the core of standing. See Daughtrey v. Carter, 584 F.2d 1050, 1056 (D.C.Cir.1978) (characterizing injury requirement as first and foremost element of standing). The requisite injury cannot be to merely abstract interests, see Diamond v. Charles, 476 U.S. 54, 106 S.Ct. 1697, 90 L.Ed.2d 48 (1986); Simon, 426 U.S. at 40, 96 S.Ct. at 1925; Sierra Club, 405 U.S. at 739-40, 92 S.Ct. at 1368-69. Nevertheless, the distinct and palpable injury, see Warth v. Seldin, 442 U.S. at 501, 95 S.Ct. at 2206, suffered by a party need not be tangible or great: an identifiable trifle will do. See United States v. SCRAP, 412 U.S. at 689 n. 14, 93 S.Ct. at 2417 n. 14. 85 Injury to aesthetic or recreational interests, as well as to more traditional economic interests, will support a claim of standing. See, e.g., Sierra Club, 405 U.S. at 734, 92 S.Ct. at 1366 (Aesthetic and environmental well-being, like economic well-being, are important ingredients of the quality of life in our society, and the fact that particular environmental interests are shared by the many rather than the few does not make them less deserving of legal protection through the judicial process.); Montgomery Envtl. Coalition v. Costle, 646 F.2d 568, 576-78 (D.C.Cir.1980) (concerned citizens professing interest in the preservation of the environment held, under statutory provision incorporating the Sierra Club test, to have standing to challenge permits issued to sewage treatment plants); Committee for Auto Responsibility v. Solomon, 603 F.2d 992, 997-99 (D.C.Cir.1979), cert. denied sub. nom. Committee for Auto Responsibility v. Freeman, 445 U.S. 915, 100 S.Ct. 1274, 63 L.Ed.2d 599 (1980) (environmental organization has standing to challenge [h]arm to health and conservational interests stemming from failure of General Services Administration to prepare an environmental impact statement prior to leasing city land for use as a parking lot). Also significant here is the time-honored principle that harm can be actual or threatened, see Valley Forge, 454 U.S. at 472, 102 S.Ct. at 758, thus allowing those who plausibly anticipate future injury to bring suit. See Wilderness Soc'y v. Griles, 824 F.2d 4, 10-12 (D.C.Cir.1987) (discussing standards for determining when an allegation of threatened injury suffices for standing); see also National Wildlife Fed'n v. Burford, 835 F.2d 305, 313-14 (D.C.Cir.1987) (same). 86 The second prong of the standing inquiry is causation: the injury alleged must be fairly traceable to the action under attack. The Supreme Court's decisions on this point show that mere indirectness of causation is no barrier to standing, and thus, an injury worked on one party by another through a third party intermediary may suffice. See, e.g., Meese v. Keene, --- U.S. ----, 107 S.Ct. 1862, 95 L.Ed.2d 415 (1987) (would-be distributor has standing to challenge Justice Department's characterization of film as political propaganda under foreign agents' registration act because label could hurt his chances of reelection to state senate); United States v. SCRAP, 412 U.S. 669, 93 S.Ct. 2405. As we stated in Autolog Corp. v. Regan, 731 F.2d 25 (D.C.Cir.1984): 87 It is well settled that a plaintiff has standing to challenge conduct that indirectly results in injury.... 'We are concerned here not with the length of the chain of causation, but on [sic] the plausibility of each of the links that comprise the chain.' 88 731 F.2d at 31 (citations omitted) (quoting Public Citizen v. Lockheed Aircraft Corp., 565 F.2d 708, 717 (D.C.Cir.1977)). Other prominent cases in which the fairly traceable requirement was found satisfied despite a relatively attenuated chain of causation are Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Envtl. Study Group, 438 U.S. 59, 98 S.Ct. 2620, 57 L.Ed.2d 595 (1978), in which the Supreme Court held that an environmental group had standing to challenge Price-Anderson Act's limitation on utility liability in event of nuclear accident, and Japan Whaling Ass'n v. American Cetacean Soc'y, 478 U.S. 221, 106 S.Ct. 2860, 92 L.Ed.2d 166 (1986), in which the Court held that a whale-watching group had standing to challenge the failure of the Secretary of Commerce to cite Japan for violations of international limitations on harvesting of whales. 89 The final prong of current constitutional standing analysis is redressability. Redressability and causation analyses often replicate one another, particularly in cases where, as here, the relief requested is merely the cessation of illegal conduct. See Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. at 753 n. 19, 104 S.Ct. at 3325-26 n. 19; see also Haitian Refugee Center v. Gracey, 809 F.2d 794, 801 (D.C.Cir.1987) (describing traceability and redressability requirements as closely related); cf. California Ass'n of the Physically Handicapped v. Federal Communications Comm'n, 778 F.2d 823, 825 n. 7 (D.C.Cir.1985) (explaining the distinction between the two requirements). We note, however, that a party seeking judicial relief need not show to a certainty that a favorable decision will redress his injury. A mere likelihood will do. Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 261, 97 S.Ct. 555, 561, 50 L.Ed.2d 450 (1977); Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 280-81, 98 S.Ct. 2733, 2743, 57 L.Ed.2d 750 (1978) (Powell, J.); International Ladies Garment Workers' Union v. Donovan, 722 F.2d 795, 811 n. 27 (D.C.Cir.1983), cert. denied, sub. nom. Breen v. International Ladies Garment Workers' Union, 469 U.S. 820, 105 S.Ct. 93, 83 L.Ed.2d 39 (1984). As we stated in Community Nutrition Inst. v. Block, 698 F.2d 1239, 1249 (D.C.Cir.1983), rev'd on other grounds, 467 U.S. 340, 104 S.Ct. 2450, 81 L.Ed.2d 270 (1984), a plaintiff need not negate every 'speculative and hypothetical possibilit(y) ... in order to demonstrate the likely effectiveness of judicial relief.'  90 With these guiding principles in mind, we turn to Industry's 18 remaining standing challenges to NWF's various claims. For the sake of coherence we have classified those challenges into two broad groups, each of which raises analytically similar issues.