Also known as: Article 3 standing requirements · article III standing · constitutional standing · Article III standing
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
The constitutional requirements limiting federal judicial power to actual cases or controversies. A plaintiff must demonstrate an injury in fact that is concrete and particularized, fairly traceable to the defendant's conduct, and likely to be redressed by a favorable decision. Generalized grievances shared by all citizens and bare statutory violations without real-world harm fail to satisfy these requirements.
Aaron Adams, a taxpayer, sued the federal government claiming that an agency violated a statute by failing to follow required procedures in issuing permits. Adams identified no personal harm beyond his interest in lawful government action. The court dismissed the suit because the asserted injury was a generalized grievance shared equally by all citizens.
Alfred Ashford sued a data broker after discovering an error in his profile that violated a federal accuracy statute. Ashford alleged no lost opportunities, financial loss, or material risk of misuse. The court held that the statutory violation alone did not supply the concrete injury required for standing.
Aurora Biotech discharged pollutants into a river used by members of an environmental group for recreation. The members submitted affidavits showing concrete plans to visit the river and documented harm to their aesthetic interests. The court found the injury sufficiently particularized and imminent to support standing.
Laidlaw Environmental Services acquired a hazardous waste incinerator facility in Roebuck, South Carolina in 1986 that included a wastewater treatment plant. Shortly thereafter, it obtained an NPDES permit effective January 1, 1987 authorizing limited discharges of pollutants including mercury into the North Tyger River. Laidlaw repeatedly exceeded the permit limits, violating the mercury discharge limit on 489 occasions between 1987 and 1995. On April 10, 1992, Friends of the Earth and Citizens Local Environmental Action Network sent Laidlaw a 60-day notice letter of their intent to file a citizen suit under the Clean Water Act. On June 9, 1992, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control reached a settlement with Laidlaw requiring payment of a $100,000 civil penalty. On June 12, 1992, FOE filed its federal citizen suit seeking declaratory and injunctive relief plus civil penalties. After a bench trial the District Court found the violations, imposed a $405,800 penalty, awarded litigation costs to FOE, and denied injunctive relief because Laidlaw had achieved substantial compliance since August 1992. The Fourth Circuit assumed without deciding that FOE initially had standing but held that the case had become moot because civil penalties payable to the government would not redress any injury FOE had suffered. The Supreme Court granted certiorari; after the Fourth Circuit decision but before argument the entire Roebuck facility was permanently closed, dismantled, and placed for sale with all discharges permanently ceased.
View caseAtlas Ventures sued a manufacturer for past reporting violations under an environmental statute. The company sought only civil penalties payable to the government and identified no ongoing harm or redressable injury to itself. The court dismissed the action for lack of redressability.
Citizens for a Better Environment, an association of individuals interested in environmental protection, sued Steel Company, a small manufacturing company located in Chicago, alleging that Steel Company had failed since 1988 to complete and submit the annual hazardous-chemical inventory forms and toxic-chemical release forms required by the Emergency Planning and Community Right-To-Know Act of 1986. The forms must list the name and location of the facility, the name and quantity of each specified chemical on hand, the waste-disposal method employed, and the annual quantity of toxic chemicals released into each environmental medium, with inventory forms due each March 1 and release forms due each July 1. In 1995 the association sent the required 60-day notice to Steel Company, the EPA Administrator, and Illinois authorities, accurately alleging that Steel Company had never filed the required forms. Upon receiving the notice, Steel Company filed all of the overdue forms with the appropriate agencies. The EPA took no enforcement action, and after the waiting period expired the association filed its complaint in federal district court. The complaint, brought on behalf of the association and its members, sought a declaratory judgment that Steel Company had violated EPCRA, authorization for periodic inspections of Steel Company's facility and records at Steel Company's expense, an order compelling Steel Company to provide the association with copies of all compliance reports submitted to the EPA, civil penalties of $25,000 per day for each violation, and an award of the association's investigation and litigation costs including reasonable attorney and expert witness fees. The district court agreed with Steel Company on both points and dismissed the complaint. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a conflict with the Sixth Circuit's decision in a factually indistinguishable case.
View caseThe state of Massachusetts sued a federal agency for failing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. The state showed that rising sea levels threatened its coastal property and that regulation would reduce those emissions. The court held that the state's particularized injury satisfied standing.
In October 1999, nineteen private organizations filed a rulemaking petition with the EPA requesting regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles under section 202 of the Clean Air Act. The petition asserted that carbon dioxide and other gases were heat-trapping greenhouse gases that had accelerated climate change, with carbon dioxide as the most important contributor according to the IPCC's 1995 report. The EPA received more than fifty thousand comments after requesting public input in 2001. A National Research Council report from 2001, prepared at the White House's request, stated that greenhouse gases from human activities were causing surface air temperatures to rise. On September 8, 2003, the EPA denied the petition on two grounds: the Clean Air Act did not authorize regulation of greenhouse gases from motor vehicles, and even assuming authority, the agency would not regulate due to scientific uncertainty about causation and concerns that regulation would conflict with the President's comprehensive approach involving voluntary programs and international negotiations. The denial order referenced Congress's decision in 1990 not to enact binding emissions limitations and the political history of climate change issues. Petitioners including the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and other states and private organizations then sought review in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The D.C. Circuit denied the petition for review in 2005. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in 2006 to address the issues raised by the denial. Massachusetts submitted affidavits showing that global sea levels rose 10 to 20 centimeters over the 20th century, already causing loss of coastal land owned by the Commonwealth, with projections of further inundation by 2100. The United States transportation sector alone emitted more than 1.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 1999, accounting for over 6 percent of worldwide emissions.
View caseThe City of New York challenged the President's cancellation of a spending provision that would have provided the city with federal funds. The cancellation directly reduced the city's expected revenue and altered its budget planning. The court found the city's concrete fiscal injury sufficient for standing.
In April 1996 Congress enacted the Line Item Veto Act, which took effect on January 1, 1997, and authorized the President to cancel in whole any dollar amount of discretionary budget authority, any item of new direct spending, or any limited tax benefit. On August 5, 1997, Congress passed the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which included section 4722(c) deeming certain New York health-care-provider taxes permissible and in compliance with federal Medicaid requirements. On the same day Congress passed the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, which included section 968 granting a limited tax benefit allowing owners of certain food refiners and processors to defer recognition of gain when selling stock to eligible farmers' cooperatives. On August 11, 1997, President Clinton transmitted notices canceling section 4722(c) of the Balanced Budget Act and section 968 of the Taxpayer Relief Act. The City of New York, two hospital associations, one hospital, and two unions representing health-care employees filed suit challenging the cancellation of section 4722(c). Snake River Potato Growers, Inc., a farmers' cooperative formed in May 1997 to acquire potato-processing facilities, and one of its members filed a separate action challenging the cancellation of section 968. The District Court for the District of Columbia consolidated the two actions and held that at least one plaintiff in each case had Article III standing. It ruled on the merits that the cancellations did not conform to the constitutionally mandated procedures for the enactment or repeal of laws. Earlier, six Members of Congress who had voted against the Line Item Veto Act had brought a separate challenge; the District Court had held the Act unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court dismissed that action for lack of standing in Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811 (1997). After the President exercised the cancellation authority, the present appellees filed suit challenging the two cancellations, and the District Court again held the statute invalid.
View caseNo. Article III requires an injury in fact that is both particularized and concrete. A plaintiff cannot rely solely on the fact that a statute was violated. There must be some actual or realistically threatened harm.
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A generalized grievance shared in substantially equal measure by all citizens, such as an interest in having the government follow the law, does not satisfy Article III. Congress cannot create standing by authorizing citizen suits where no concrete and particularized injury exists.
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The plaintiff must allege an invasion of a legally protected interest that is concrete and particularized and actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical. Statutory violations may suffice only when they create a real risk of harm beyond a purely procedural breach.
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