Court Opinion

ID: 9425358
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:30.261738+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:54.760693
License: Public Domain

MR. Justice White,
with whom The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Rehnquist join, dissenting in part.
I would reverse the judgment of the District Court and order the complaint dismissed because appellees lack standing to bring this suit. None of our cases, including inferences that may be drawn from dicta in Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U. S. 727 (1972), where we denied standing to petitioner there, are sufficient to confer standing on plaintiffs in circumstances like these. The allegations here do not satisfy the threshold requirement of injury in fact for constituting a justiciable case or controversy. The injury alleged is that the failure of the Commission to suspend a 2.5% freight rate increase may discourage the transportation of recyclable materials, thus retarding the use of recycled materials, causing further consumption of our forests and natural resources (some of which might be taken from the Washington metropolitan area), and resulting in more refuse and undis-posable materials to further pollute the environment.
The majority acknowledges that these allegations reflect an “attenuated line of causation,” ante, at 688, but is willing to suspend its judgment in the dim hope that proof at trial will in some unexplained way flesh *723them out and establish the necessary nexus between these appellees and the across-the-board rate increase they complain of. To me, the alleged injuries are so remote, speculative, and insubstantial in fact that they fail to confer standing. They become no more concrete, real, or substantial when it is added that materials will cost more at the marketplace and that somehow the freight rate increase will increase air pollution. Allegations such as these are no more substantial and direct and no more qualify these appellees to litigate than allegations of a taxpayer that governmental expenditures will increase his taxes and have an impact on his pocketbook, Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447, 486-489 (1923), or allegations that governmental decisions are offensive to reason or morals. The general “right, possessed by every citizen, to require that the Government be administered according to law and that the public moneys be not wasted” does not confer standing to litigate in federal courts. Fairchild v. Hughes, 258 U. S. 126, 129 (1922). New York did not have standing to complain when it asserted merely the possible adverse effects of diversion of water from Lake Michigan upon hypothetical power developments in “the indefinite future.” New York v. Illinois, 274 U. S. 488, 490 (1927). Assumed potential invasions are insufficient bases for a justiciable case or controversy. Arizona v. California, 283 U. S. 423, 462 (1931). As I see the allegations in this case, they are in reality little different from the general-interest allegations found insufficient and too remote in Sierra Club. If they are sufficient here, we are well on our way to permitting citizens at large to litigate any decisions of the Government which fall in an area of interest to them and with which they disagree.
Assuming, however, that a majority of the Court adheres to the conclusion that a constitutional case or controversy exists in these circumstances and that plain*724tiffs may sue, I would agree that the District Court erred in entering an injunction which Congress quite clearly had long since divested it of the power to enter. Accordingly, I join Part III of the Court's opinion. I add only that failure to maintain this country’s railroads even in their present anemic condition will guarantee that recyclable materials will stay where they are — far beyond the reach of recycling plants that as a consequence may not be built at all.