Court Opinion

ID: 9427316
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:20:23.515172+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:06.142777
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stewart,
concurring in the result.
With some difficulty I can accept the proposition that federal subject-matter jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1331 (1976 ed.) exists here, at least with respect to the suit against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency responsible for the administration of the Price-Anderson Act. The claim under federal law is to be found in the allegation that the Act, if enforced, will deprive the appellees of certain property rights, in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Pifth Amendment. One of those property rights, and perhaps the sole cognizable one, is a state-created right to recover full compensation for tort injuries. The Act impinges on that right by limiting recovery in major accidents.
*95But there never has been such an accident, and it is sheer speculation that one will ever occur. For this reason I think there is no present justiciable controversy, and that the appel-lees were without standing to initiate this litigation.
On the issue of standing, the Court relies on the “present” injuries of increased water temperatures and low-level radiation emissions. Even assuming that but for the Act the plant would not exist and therefore neither would its effects on the environment, I cannot believe that it follows that the appel-lees have standing to attack the constitutionality of the Act. Apart from a “but for” connection in the loosest sense of that concept, there is no relationship at all between the injury alleged for standing purposes and the injury alleged for federal subject-matter jurisdiction.
Surely a plaintiff does not have standing simply because his challenge, if successful, will remove the injury relied on for standing purposes only because it will put the defendant out of existence. Surely there must be some direct relationship between the plaintiff’s federal claim and the injury relied on for standing. Cf. Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Dev. Corp., 429 U. S. 252, 261; United States v. SCRAP, 412 U. S. 669, 687-690; Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U. S. 614, 617-618. An interest in the local water temperature does not, in short, give these appellees standing to bring a suit under 28 U. S. C. § 1331 (1976 ed.) to challenge the constitutionality of a law limiting liability in an unrelated and as-yet-to-occur major nuclear accident.
For these reasons, I would remand these cases to the District Court with instructions to dismiss the complaint.