Court Opinion

ID: 9429677
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:27:38.36567+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:20.849900
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
concurring.
With increasing frequency this Court seems prone to disregard the important distinctions between cases that come to us from the highest court of a State and those that arise in the federal system. The discussion of standing by the majority and the dissent illustrates the point.
What may loosely be described as the “standing” issue in this case actually encompasses three distinct questions: (1) Is the dispute between the Secretary of State of Maryland and Munson Co. a “case” or “controversy” within the meaning of Art. Ill of the United States Constitution; (2) are there “prudential reasons” for refusing to allow Munson to base its claim for relief on the fact that the statute is unconstitutional as it applies to the company’s potential clients; and (3) is this a proper case for overbreadth analysis? The fact that this case comes to us from the Court of Appeals of Maryland is of critical significance with respect to the first two issues, but is of less importance with respect to the third. The three separate questions, however, clearly merit separate discussion.
H — 1
Respondent unquestionably has standing” in a jurisdictional sense. The Court appears to be unanimous on the “case” or “controversy” issue.1 The case-or-controversy requirement, of course, relates only to the jurisdiction of this *971Court and has no bearing on the jurisdiction of the Maryland courts. Nothing in Art. Ill of the Federal Constitution prevents the Maryland Court of Appeals from rendering an advisory opinion concerning the constitutionality of Maryland legislation if it considers it appropriate to do so.2 Thus, the decision of the Maryland Court of Appeals that it had jurisdiction to decide this case is one we have no power to review.
If we were persuaded that there is no Art. Ill “standing” in this case, we would have a duty to dismiss the writ of certiorari and allow the judgment of the Maryland Court of Appeals to remain in effect. No Member of the Court, however, argues that we must follow that course. Since every Member of the Court has expressed an opinion concerning the constitutionality of the Maryland law, it is difficult to perceive the relevance of the fact that the Framers of Art. Ill of the Federal Constitution elected not to give the federal judiciary a “roving commission” to render advisory opinions. Post, at 976.3 In all events, there is little real dispute concerning standing in the jurisdictional sense.
*972Whether respondent has “standing” to assert the constitutional rights of its potential customers is not a jurisdictional issue. As the Court correctly notes, in addition to the constitutional contraints on this Court’s jurisdiction, this Court has “developed, for its own governance in the cases confessedly within its jurisidiction, a series of rules under which it has avoided passing upon a large part of all the constitutional questions pressed upon it for decision.” Ashwander v. TV A, 297 U. S. 288, 346 (1936) (Brandéis, J., concurring). We may require federal courts to follow those rules, but we have no power to impose them on state courts.
Thus, the rule that a litigant generally must assert his own legal rights and interests, and cannot rest his claim to relief on the legal rights and interests of third parties, see ante, at 955, post, at 977, is a judge made rule. Rules of that kind that we fashion for our own governance, or indeed in the exercise of our supervisory powers over other federal judges, are not necessarily applicable to the work of state judges. Those judges may, of course, elect to follow our example, but there is no reason why they must do so. Instead, I believe they are free to adopt prudential standing rules that differ from ours — and surely they may allow more latitude for third-party attacks on state laws than we might consider appropriate.
In this case, even if we might deny a fundraiser prudential standing to attack a statute on the basis of its impact on a charity in a case arising in a declaratory judgment action in federal court, the state court was perfectly willing to hear such a challenge to the Maryland statute. If we should conclude in this case that we are unwilling to listen to Munson’s arguments about the impact of the Maryland statute on the rights of its clients, it surely does not follow that we can deny the Maryland Court of Appeals the power to decide that it will listen to those arguments. Thus, it seems quite clear to me that our analysis of the prudential standing issue should serve only the function of determining whether this case is *973one that is appropriate for the exercise of our discretionary-certiorari jurisdiction.4
If, as the dissent implies,5 Munson is not a proper party to advance a constitutional challenge to a statute of this type, then surely we should not review a judgment of the state court that was based on that party’s arguments. In that event, the proper course would be a dismissal of the writ as having been improvidently granted.
In my opinion, while the writ of certiorari should have never issued in this case, there are sufficient reasons for finding that Munson’s “third-party” standing is proper as a prudential matter that the writ does not need to be dismissed as improvidently granted. Whether a particular litigant has a sufficiently significant stake in the outcome of a constitutional challenge to a statute based on its application to individuals not before the court to render him an appropriate party to make the challenge on their behalf is a question of the degree of his interest and the nature of the relationship between him and the individuals whose rights are allegedly infringed.
Munson has been threatened with criminal sanctions under the statute, but Munson does not contend that its own First Amendment rights are violated by that threat. The fact of that threat is relevant, however, to assessing whether Munson is a proper party to litigate the constitutional ques*974tion for prudential purposes. The fact that Munson has been actually, but indirectly, injured in fact by the effect of the statute on its potential clients is not enough, standing alone, to permit it to litigate the constitutionality of the statute in this Court. The Court properly recognizes that more is required and pinpoints the crucial facts that the “activity sought to be protected is at the heart of the business relationship between Munson and its clients, and Munson’s interests in challenging the statute are completely consistent with the First Amendment interests of the charities it represents.” Ante, at 958. Those factors are sufficient to assure us that Munson will vigorously litigate the question in this Court, thus providing this Court with the basis for informed deci-sionmaking. That is the primary prudential question for this Court in a case coming to us from a state court, which may permit third-party actions for declaratory relief that federal district courts might not necessarily entertain.
III
Once it is determined that Munson may assert the First Amendment rights of its clients, it follows that Munson may challenge the statute on any ground that they might assert. Munson does not argue that the statute would be unconstitutional as applied to the Fraternal Order of Police, even though on this record a successful challenge on that ground would appear to redress Munson’s injury. Instead, it attacks the statute on overbreadth grounds. The fact that this case comes to us from a state court is relevant to our consideration of the merits of the overbreadth challenge to some extent as well. We need not construe the statute for ourselves, compare post, at 984, and n. 5; the state court has authoritatively done so. That construction greatly aids an informed analysis of the merits of 'the First Amendment overbreadth question. The state court’s judgment that the illegitimate sweep of the state statute is substantial in relationship to its legitimate applications surely merits serious *975consideration by this Court to the extent that issue turns on a quantitative assessment of future applications of the statute.
In summary, while I am persuaded that this Court should have declined to exercise its certiorari jurisdiction in this case — surely it had no business granting certiorari to review the determination that “Munson had standing to challenge the validity of §103D”, see ante, at 954 — I concur in the Court’s opinion.

 Since the dissent does not argue that Munson lacks Art. Ill standing, the ode to Art. Ill in the dissenting opinion would seem to be totally gratuitous in what the dissent apparently agrees is a “case or controversy.” The dissent does not express the opinion that the writ of certiorari should be dismissed for want of jurisdiction.

 Indeed, the Maryland Court of Appeals’ discussion of standing in this case indicates it is unclear whether the issue of standing may be waived under the Maryland practice, see 294 Md. 160, 168-170, 448 A. 2d 935, 940-941 (1982), and hence suggests that the Maryland courts may be willing to render advisory opinions.

 At the outset of the dissenting opinion we are reminded that federal courts have no “roving commission” to survey the statute books and pass judgments on laws prematurely, and that “[mjusings” regarding the constitutionality of “hypothetical” statutes “may be fitting for the classroom and the statehouse, but they are neither wise nor permissible in the courtroom.” Post, at 976. While there is a case or controversy concerning the validity of § 103D, which makes it a crime for a charity to pay more than 25% of the receipts from a fundraising activity on expenses, there is no case or controversy concerning a Maryland statute which “regulated only the rates charged by professional fundraisers to charitable organizations,” post, at 981 — no such Maryland statute exists. The dissent, ignoring the wisdom espoused early in its opinion, provides us with an advisory opinion on such a hypothetical statute: “The statute would be clearly constitutional.” Ibid.

 It is revealing that the dissent cites a major abstention case, Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971), at the outset of its opinion discussing judicial review. Post, at 976. The hodgepodge of concerns expressed by the dissent with respect to entertaining this case were sound reasons for this Court to abstain from exercising our discretionary certiorari jurisdiction in this case coming from a state court, but those concerns simply do not defeat our jurisdiction to hear it nor respondent’s standing to litigate it.

 The dissent does not argue that the writ should be dismissed as improvidently granted on the ground that this ease is an unwise vehicle for adjudicating the constitutional question presented. Cf. New York v. Uplinger, ante, at 249 (Stevens, J., concurring). Indeed, the dissent is perfectly willing to adjudicate the constitutionality of the statute and is quite confident that it does not violate the First Amendment.