Standing doctrine confuses both lower courts and litigants, because the Court manipulates the doctrine to serve other objectives.  When the Court wants to reach the merits of a case, the standing doctrine is often relaxed.  Conversely, when the Court wishes to avoid deciding the merits of a case--or perhaps, when it wants to shut a whole category of cases out of court--, the requirements for standing are tightened.

The standing doctrine consists both of constitutionally-derived rules and judicially-created gatekeeping ("prudential") rules.  The Court has found Article III to require that plaintiffs demonstrate injury-in-fact, that the injury in question is fairly traceable to the defendant's challenged action, and that the injury is one that could be redressed by a favorable decision.

Standing has been an issue when taxpayers have challenged expenditures of general tax revenues.  In 1923, in Frothingham v Mellon, the Court announced that a taxpayer's mere ideological opposition to an alleged illegal expenditure of federal tax revenue failed to provide a sufficient basis for standing.  In Flast v Cohen (1968), however, the Court found that Florene Flast had standing as a taxpayer to challenge as a unconstitutional exercise of the taxing and spending power the use of federal dollars to pay for instructional materials in religious schools.  The Court saw a critical to taxpayer standing that the plaintiff allege a specific constitutional limitation--in this case, the Establishment Clause--on the spending power had been violated.  In a twist added in the 1982 case of Valley Forge Christian College v Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Court concluded--in a case involving a donation of federal property to a religious college--that taxpayers lacked standing to challenge an Establishment Clause violation when Congress was exercising its power under the Property Clause rather than the Spending Clause.

Environmental suits have produced several important decisions in the area of standing law.  In Sierra Club v Morton (1972), the Court declared that an environmental organization would have standing to challenge development in the Mineral King Valley of California, on land owned by the National Forest Service and National Park Service, if it could show that its members were likely to suffer an aesthetic injury were the development to go forward.  The next year, in U. S. v SCRAP, the Court found that five law students who formed a small environmental group had standing to challenge a decision of the Interstate Commerce Commission allowing a 2.5% increase in rail freight rates.  The Court accepted SCRAP's argument that they were likely to be injured if the rate increase went into effect because the increase would disproportionately affect recycled goods-- and if fewer goods were recycled, the group would be more likely to encounter litter on its hikes around the Washington, D. C. area.  In the important case of Lujan v Defenders of Wildlife (1992), the law relating to environmental standing sharply departed from the relaxed approach taken in the two earlier cases.  The case involved a national environmental organization's challenge to a Dep't of Interior rule declaring that federal agencies had no duty to consult with DOI about the impact their projects in foreign countries might have on endangered populations of animals.  The Court found the organization lacked standing even though the complaint asserted that members planned to visit certain foreign countries where they hoped to see endangered species threatened by projects receiving federal assistance ("too speculative" an injury, according to the Court), or visit zoos where these animals might be less likely in the future to be found ("beyond all reason," said the Court).  The Court also rejected standing based on a citizen suit provision in the Endangered Species Act.  Finally, four members of the Court agreed that even if the plaintiffs could have met the injury-in-fact test, standing would still not exist because the alleged injury might not be preventable by relief granted if the court ruled in the defendant's favor.

Mineral King Valley, where planned development was challenged by the Sierra Club.

Three standing cases in the readings show how difficult standing might be to establish in an era of tightened standing rules.  In Warth v Seldin (1975), the Court threw out a suit brought by persons challenging exclusionary zoning ordinances of a wealthy suburb of Rochester, New York.  The Court said the plaintiffs failed to identify a specific project that would have been built but for the allegedly unconstitutional ordinances.  Other alleged basis for standing were rejected on grounds of an insufficient showing of causation or lack of redressibility. In City of Los Angeles v Lyons (1983), the Court dismisses a suit for injunctive relief brought by a Los Angeles motorist who had been rendered unconscious by what he alleged was the LAPD's unconstitutional employment of a chokehold as a method of subduing suspects.  The Court said that while Lyons undoubtedly had standing to sue for damages, a suit for injunctive relief required him to show there was a real and immediate threat of him being subjected to another chokehold--something the Court said he could not do. Finally, in Allen v Wright (1984), the Court found that plaintiffs challenging tax exempt status for racially discriminatory private schools failed to show that the injuries they alleged were "fairly traceable" to the defendant's (the I.R.S's) illegal action (granting of tax-exempt status).

The Court announced two major standing decisions in 2007, both decided by 5 to 4 votes.  In Massachusetts v Environmental Protection Agency, the Court found that the state of Massachusetts had standing to challenge the EPA's refusal to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.  The Court said that states are entitled to special consideration when it comes to standing issues, and thus found the state's alleged injury to its citizens and its natural resources caused by the failure of the agency to limit greenhouse emissions a sufficient basis for standing. Rising sea levels along the state's coast, potentially caused by the EPA's failure to regulate greenhouse gases, were viewed as being an actual or imminent injury sufficient to establish standing. The Court observed that "the harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized." In Hein v Freedom From Religion Foundation, however, the Court adopted a new, more restrictive view of taxpayer standing.  The Court concluded that Freedom from Religion Foundation lacked standing to challenge a White House program on faith-based initiatives.   Taxpayer standing, the Court said, reached only congressionally-funded programs, not Executive Branch initiatives such as one that helps religious charities win federal grants.

In 2009, the Court again considered the standing of an environmental organization, Earth Island Institute, which challenged a Forest Service regulation exempting small timber sales from its usual public notice and comment provisions.  Earth Island alleged the exemption was illegally applied to a timber sale in a California national forest, called the Burnt Ridge sale.  After the district court granted a preliminary injunction against the sale, the parties settled the Burnt Ridge dispute, but the district court proceeded to reach the merits of the suit and found the small sale exemption from the usual procedural rules to be unlawful.  On appeal, the government successfully argued that once the Burnt Ridge dispute settled, Earth Island no longer had standing and that the district court should not have reached the merits of the case and concluded the exemption could not be applied in other timber sales in other national forests.  Justice Scalia wrote the opinion for the Court in the 5 to 4 decision.  [Summers v Earth Island Institute, 3/3/2009]

Standing became the Court's way out of making a highly controversial decision on the constitutionality of state laws banning gay marriage in the 2013 case of Hollingsworth v Perry.  By a 5 to 4 vote, the Court ruled that proponents of California's Amendment 8 (overturning state legislation legalizing gay marriage) lacked standing to appeal a federal district court decision invalidating the amendment after the State of California chose not to appeal.  Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts said the Court "had never before upheld the standing of a private party" to defend a state law, and that the plaintiffs had only a "generalized grievance" with the court's ruling.  Justice Kennedy, in dissent, warned that the decision would give enormous power to a single federal district court in cases where state officials agree with the outcome, and also noted that the initiative process that led to Amendment 8 was intended to be an end-run around state officials who might not always be responsive to the public.  The dissenters argued that the Court should have given deference to California's decision that the appellants had a right to defend Amendment 8 in the appellate courts.

Four years before the Court struck down a Connecticut law banning the sale, dissemination, and use of contraceptive devices in the landmark case of Griswold v Connecticut, the Court considered a declaratory judgment  action seeking to enjoin future enforcement of the law on the grounds that it violated the Constitution (Poe v Ullman (1961)).  On a 5 to 4 vote, the Court dismissed the action for lack of a case or controversy.  The Court noted that no prosecution under the challenged law was pending, that only one prosecution had ever been brought under the law, and that contraceptives were openly sold in Connecticut drugstores.  Writing for the Court, Justice Frankfurter concluded that the plaintiffs failed to show the real threat of prosecution necessary to have their case heard.  Frankfurter declared, "This Court cannot be umpire to debates concerning harmless, empty shadows."  Four dissenters took strong issue with the Court's dismissal of the case.  Dissenting Justice John Harlan concluded the suit was neither collusive nor too abstract for resolution, and that the threat of prosecution under the law was real.

In Epperson v Arkansas (1968), the Court reached the merits of a declaratory judgment action brought by an Arkansas biology teacher challenging a state law authorizing prosecution of persons teaching the theory of evolution in public schools.  Even though there had been no recent prosecutions under the law and the likelihood of a prosecution against Epperson seemed remote, the Court said the case--unlike Poe v Ullman--presented no "double contingency."  Cases are appropriately dismissed, according to the Epperson Court, only when the Court is unsure the state will prosecute AND, if it chooses to prosecute, whether it will choose to prosecute someone in the position of the plaintiff.  Here, the Court said, if Arkansas brought a prosecution under its anti-evolution law, it would be brought against someone like Epperson.