Court Opinion

ID: 9430604
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:30:11.284999+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:13.411290
License: Public Domain

*296Justice Powell,
dissenting.
The Court today holds that petitioner UAW has standing to proceed in a suit challenging the Secretary of Labor’s interpretation of the eligibility provisions of the Trade Act, codified at 19 U. S. C. §2291, because those members of the UAW who have claims pending before a state administrative agency would have standing to bring a similar suit. The record, however, provides no information as to how many members of the UAW fall within this potential class. There is the danger that ultimately the number of members that the UAW can represent will be quite small. The Union may therefore lack the incentive to provide the adequate representation needed by the courts.
It is well settled that an association can represent its members’ interest in a third-party action when an association has alleged a related injury. E. g., Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490 (1975). Moreover, in appropriate circumstances this Court has conferred standing upon an association whose members have suffered an alleged injury, even though the organization itself has not suffered an injury. In Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Comm’n, 432 U. S. 333 (1977), the Court stated:
“[W]e have recognized that an association has standing to bring suit on behalf of its members when: (a) its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right; (b) the interests it seeks to protect are germane to the organization’s purpose; and (c) neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit.” Id., at 343.
It is undisputed that achieving unemployment benefits under the program of trade readjustment allowance is “germane” to the UAW’s purpose in the sense that one of its goals is to secure such benefits for its workers. I do not believe, however, that a determination of “germane” in this formalis*297tic sense should be sufficient to confer standing upon the UAW here.
A consistent concern of our standing cases has been the adequacy of representation of the organization purportedly acting on behalf of the injured parties, especially when the organization itself has not suffered injury. This Court has repeatedly expressed its reluctance to confer standing on third parties for fear of inadequate representation. “The courts depend on effective advocacy, and therefore should prefer to construe legal rights only when the most effective advocates of those rights are before them.” Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U. S. 106, 114 (1976) (opinion of Blackmun, J.). See, e. g., Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 204 (1962) (standing requirement aimed at “assuring] that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends”); Holden v. Hardy, 169 U. S. 366, 397 (1898) (assertion of third parties’ rights would come with “greater cogency” from the third parties themselves).
Since the concept of organizational representation is based on a theoretical identity between the organization and its members, the organization’s interest in the outcome is based on the members’ stake in the outcome. The number of members in the organization with a concrete stake in the outcome, however, may be so small that this theoretical identity disappears. It may develop in this case, in fact, that the great majority of members in the Union have little or no interest in the litigation. Moreover, a union may have reasons for instituting a suit — such as the publicity that attends a major case — other than to assert rights of its members. In such a case, the “concrete adverseness” required throughout a litigation by our cases may be absent.*
*298In the light of these dangers of inadequate representation, I would not find — on the basis of the record before us — that the UAW had standing based on an amorphous and unenu-merated group of injured parties. Accordingly, I dissent.

It is, of course, true that many organizations have financial resources, expertise, and research ability that individual plaintiffs or ad hoc groups lack. But absent the requisite interest of the organization itself, the presence of these resources does not ensure adequacy of representation. It also may be noted that organizational standing differs in controlling *298respects from the typical class action. In the latter, there must be an identity of interests among all plaintiffs before the court — an identity that can be counted upon to assure adequate representation.