Opinion ID: 3046880
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: G eneralized grievances

Text: “W hether styled as a constitutional or prudential limit on standing, the [Supreme] Court has sometimes determined that where large numbers of Americans suffer alike, the political process, rather than the judicial process, may provide the more appropriate remedy for a widely shared grievance.” Fed. Election Comm’n v. Akins, 524 U.S. 11, 23 (1998) (citing cases). Based upon this reasoning, the Supreme “Court repeatedly has rejected claims of standing predicated on the right, possessed by every citizen, to require that the Government be administered according to law.” Valley Forge Christian Coll., 454 U.S. at 482-83 (quotation, alteration omitted; citing cases); see also M assachusetts v. E.P.A., 549 U.S. 497, 516-17 (2007) (“W e will not . . . entertain citizen suits to vindicate the public’s nonconcrete interest in the proper administration of the laws.”); Lance v. Coffman, 549 U.S. 437, 442 (2007) (per curiam) (noting that the “[t]he only injury plaintiffs allege is that the law . . . has not been followed. This injury is precisely the kind of undifferentiated, generalized grievance about the conduct of government that we have refused to countenance in the past.”); Lujan, 504 U.S. at 573-74 (“W e have consistently held that a plaintiff raising only a generally available grievance about government–claiming only harm to his and every citizen’s interest in proper application of the 21 Constitution and law s, and seeking relief that no more directly and tangibly benefits him than it does the public at large–does not state an Article III case or controversy.”); id. at 573-77 (citing cases); Goode, 539 F.3d at 322 (holding taxpayers lacked standing to assert claims based upon generalized injury that all persons in Philadelphia suffered); C ortes, 508 F.3d at 164 (holding voters and taxpayers lacked standing to assert a “g en eralize d griev an ce[] of concerned citizens”); Taliaferro, 458 F.3d at 185, 190 (holding homeowners lacked standing to assert generalized challenge to local zoning ordinance); Pub. Interest Research Group of N.J., Inc. v. M agnesium Elektron, Inc., 123 F.3d 111, 120-21 (3d Cir. 1997) (holding plaintiffs lacked standing to assert generalized claim that they were injured by knowing that creek was being polluted). Such claims amount to little more than attempts “to employ a federal court as a forum in which to air . . . generalized grievances about the conduct of government.” Valley Forge Christian Coll., 454 U .S. at 479 (quotation, alteration omitted). Therefore, “assertion of a right to a particular kind of Government conduct, which the Government has violated by acting differently, cannot alone satisfy the requirements of Art. III without draining those requirements of meaning.” Id. at 483. This reasoning “invariably appears in cases w here the harm at issue is not only widely shared, but is also of an abstract and indefinite nature— for example, harm to the common concern for obedience to law.” Akins, 524 U.S. at 23 (quotation om itted). “The abstract nature of the 22 harm— for example, injury to the interest in seeing that the law is obeyed–deprives the case of the concrete specificity . . . which . . . prevents a plaintiff from obtaining what would, in effect, amount to an advisory opinion.” Id. at 24. “Often the fact that an interest is abstract and the fact that it is w idely shared go hand in hand. But their association is not invariable, and where a harm is concrete, though widely shared, the [Supreme] C ourt has found ‘injury in fact.’” Id.; see also M assachusetts v. E.P.A., 549 U.S. at 517; Goode, 539 F.3d at 322 (noting in that case that “[a]ppellants lack standing, . . . not because the alleged injuries they suffer are widely felt, but because their injuries are no different in nature from the general interest in enforcing compliance with the law which the public shares”). In this appeal, Plaintiffs argue they are not asserting generalized grievances, but are instead alleging the deprivation of “personal rights” under the First, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Even so, Plaintiffs must allege that they directly suffered an actual injury to those rights. See Valley Forge Christian Coll., 454 U.S. at 482-87; see also Goode, 539 F.3d at 315, 320-22 & 322 n.7 (applying same standing analysis to a citizen taxpayer’s claims alleging the deprivation of rights under the First, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to access the courts and to petition the legislature, and thus requiring plaintiff to establish an actual and direct injury to her rights in order to have standing).