Court Opinion

ID: 9498894
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:31:12.624385+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:07.887280
License: Public Domain

COOK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting from the denial of rehearing.
I respectfully dissent from the panel’s decision to deny rehearing in this ease. The Petition for Rehearing presented the first briefing to this panel on the issue of prudential standing. Prompted by that petition, I believe that we should “amend or supplement the original opinion to eliminate an ambiguity or correct a misstatement.” Sixth Circuit Federal Practice Manual 141 (2d ed.1999).
Under the “zone of interests” prudential standing requirement, “a plaintiffs grievance must arguably fall within the zone of interests protected or regulated by the statutory provision or constitutional guarantee invoked in the suit.” Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, 162, 117 S.Ct. 1154, 137 L.Ed.2d 281 (1997). That same grievance — or, as it is described later in Bennett, “the injury [the plaintiff] complains of,” Id. at 176, 117 S.Ct. 1154 (citation and quotation marks removed) — provides the basis for Article III standing, and must satisfy the minimum standards of injury in fact, traceability, and redressibility. Id. at 167, 117 S.Ct. 1154 (citing Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-561, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992)). An “injury in fact [is] an invasion of a judicially cognizable interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.” Id.
I would amend the opinion to clarify that the injury in this case that falls within the dormant Commerce Clause’s “zone of interests” is not the mere impediment of “[NSWMA’s] right to contract with an out-of-state waste disposal provider,” as the panel suggests. Opinion, p. 649. Stated as such, the injury would not satisfy the Article III requirements that a plaintiffs injury be “concrete and particularized,” “actual or imminent,” and “not conjectural or hypothetical.” Bennett, 520 U.S. at 167, 117 S.Ct. 1154. NSWMA has not alleged that any of its members have actually contracted with out-of-state disposal providers. The impediment of the ability of NSWMA’s members to do so in the future per se is too attenuated to meet the constitutional standard.
We should explain instead that NSWMA. has articulated a sufficiently immediate interest to satisfy both the prudential and constitutional requirements by alleging that competition between in-state and out-of-state waste disposal providers confers a current benefit (in the form of downward price pressure) on in-state waste collectors, particularly those that operate in a border county like Daviess. In Huish Detergents Inc. v. Warren County, we recognized the Constitutional value of that benefit, holding that the Commerce Clause protects the right of “consumers ... ‘[to] look to the free competition from every producing area in the Nation to protect [it] from exploitation by any.’ ” 214 F.3d 707, 711 (6th Cir.2000) (quoting Dennis v. Higgins, 498 U.S. 439, 450, 111 S.Ct. 865, 112 L.Ed.2d 969 (1991)). Here, NSWMA alleged that the Ordinance prevents NSWJVLA waste collectors who collect waste within Daviess County — including Republic, which does both waste collection and disposal — from accessing the services offered by out-of-state waste disposal providers. The option of “look[ing] to” such out-of-state providers (on which the opinion focuses) is only constitutionally relevant because such out-of-state providers compete in what would be a multi-state market but for the Ordinance.1 Because *651the Ordinance grants the Daviess County-Landfill and Transfer Station a monopoly in that multi-state market, it creates a grievance that is sufficiently actual and immediate to satisfy both the prudential and constitutional requirements for standing.
I concur with the opinion in all other respects.

. The concurrence contends that we need only look to "different facets ” of NSWMA’s *651injuries. I take its point to be that if we describe NSWMA's injury simply as the inability to dump outside of Daviess County, then the injuiy-in-fact requirement would be met by the loss of cheaper in-state options, and the zone-of-interests requirement would be met by the loss of the opportunity to contract with out-of-state providers — regardless of whether that lost opportunity contributed to the plaintiff’s injury-in-fact. Such a theory would require us to uphold standing in a case where a similar ordinance were imposed on a county in the very middle of Texas, even if the waste collectors there would never consider transporting the county’s trash out-of-state (and thus only in-state disposal service providers would compete for the county’s trash). I think it would be imprudent to uphold standing in that case, because I cannot see how such collectors would be injured by the inability to dump out-of-state. I do not see what stake such collectors would have in the court’s determination of whether the ordinance impermissibly restricted interstate commerce, and thus I cannot see how they would be proper parties to pursue a claim that it did.