Standing

Standing is the legal right to bring a lawsuit. Only a person with something actually at stake in a dispute has standing to bring a lawsuit.

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To qualify for standing, a claimant must present an injury that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent; fairly traceable to the defendant's challenged behavior; and likely to be redressed by a favorable ruling.

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Davis v. FEC, 128 S. Ct. 2759, 2768 (2008).

Often it is an association that asserts standing, and the U.S. Supreme Court has explained how associational standing supplements the constitutional requirement of standing:

Article III of the Constitution limits the federal judicial power to "Cases" or "Controversies," thereby entailing as an "irreducible minimum" that there be (1) an injury in fact, (2) a causal relationship between the injury and the challenged conduct, and (3) a likelihood that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision. See, e. g., Northeastern Fla. Chapter, Associated Gen. Contractors of America v. Jacksonville, 508 U.S. 656, 663, 124 L. Ed. 2d 586, 113 S. Ct. 2297 (1993); Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 472, 70 L. Ed. 2d 700, 102 S. Ct. 752 (1982). Supplementing these constitutional requirements, the prudential doctrine of standing has come to encompass "several judicially self-imposed limits on the exercise of federal jurisdiction." See Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751, 82 L. Ed. 2d 556, 104 S. Ct. 3315 (1984); see also Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 97, 20 L. Ed. 2d 947, 88 S. Ct. 1942 (1968).

United Food & Commer. Workers Union Local 751 v. Brown Group, 517 U.S. 544, 551 (U.S. 1996) (resolving the question of "whether a bar to the union's suit found in the test for so-called associational standing is constitutional and absolute, or prudential and malleable by Congress").

Only one of the petitioners needs to have standing to permit the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the petition for review:

Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc., 547 U.S. 47, 52, n. 2, 126 S. Ct. 1297, 164 L. Ed. 2d 156 (2006).

Important Cases

Standing presents strong separation of powers problems when the plaintiffs seek to challenge administrative action. Critically, suing the executive branch, the home of most administrative agencies, can result in improper judicial interference in executive functions. The leading precedents of the U.S. Supreme Court on standing are:

In Establishment Clause cases, plaintiffs challenge religion in public life based on two separate types of standing: (1) taxpayer standing, and (2) non-economic injury, such as alleged offense or feeling of exclusion. See Flast v. Cohen and Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation.