Opinion ID: 615195
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: “Standing for One is Standing for All”

Text: In addition to arguing that he qualifies for parens patriae and associational standing, Mr. Thiebaut contends he has standing under a concept he refers to as “standing for one is standing for all.” Mr. Thiebaut notes that in Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), the Supreme Court stated that “[o]nly one of the petitioners needs to have standing to permit [it] to consider [a] petition for review.” Id. at 518; see also Watt v. Energy Action Educational Foundation, 454 U.S. 151, 160 (1981) (“Because we find [that one plaintiff] has standing, we do not consider the standing of the other plaintiffs.”). Relying on this statement, he argues that the district court should have permitted him to remain as a plaintiff in this case after it determined that the Sierra Club had standing. In other words, Mr. Thiebaut argues that once a court has found that one plaintiff in a case has standing, it must permit all co-plaintiffs to remain in the case even if it determines they do not have standing. We disagree. The principle on which Mr. Thiebaut relies encourages judicial efficiency by 7 Because we hold that the interests Mr. Thiebaut seeks to protect are not germane to his office’s purpose, we need not decide whether the district attorney’s office is a membership association that might qualify for associational standing or whether the claims asserted by Mr. Thiebaut would require the participation of individual “members” of his office. -13- permitting a court to proceed to the merits of a case involving multiple plaintiffs seeking identical relief when it is clear that at least one plaintiff has standing. See Utah Ass’n of Cntys. v. Bush, 455 F.3d 1094, 1098 (10th Cir. 2006) (noting that “the district court declined ‘in the interest of judicial economy’ to address” whether one plaintiff had standing where the defendant conceded that another plaintiff had standing). But contrary to Mr. Thiebaut’s arguments, nothing in the cases addressing this principle suggests that a court must permit a plaintiff that lacks standing to remain in a case whenever it determines that a co-plaintiff has standing. Instead, courts retain discretion to analyze the standing of all plaintiffs in a case and to dismiss those plaintiffs that lack standing. See id.; see also Mount Evans Co. v. Madigan, 14 F.3d 1444, 1451-53 (10th Cir. 1994) (analyzing individual plaintiffs’ standing separately and dismissing some plaintiffs for lack of standing even though other plaintiffs had standing); We Are America/Somos Am. v. Maricopa Cnty. Bd. of Supervisors, No. 06-2816-PHX-RCB, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 92714, at  (D. Ariz. Aug. 18, 2011) (“Th[e] general rule [that only one plaintiff needs standing to make an issue justiciable] does not strictly prohibit a district court, in a multiple plaintiff case such as this, from considering the standing of the other plaintiffs even if it finds that one plaintiff has standing.”). Based on this discretion, we reject Mr. Thiebaut’s “standing for one is standing for all” theory as it applies to this case and affirm the district court’s decision to dismiss his claims for lack of standing.