Article III, Section 2, Clause 1:

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State, between Citizens of different States,—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

The third and final prong of Lujan's test for Article III standing, which is closely related to the “causation” test,1 requires the litigant to demonstrate that the injury he has purportedly suffered would likely be redressed if the court granted the relief that he has requested.2 When analyzing the redressability element of standing, the Supreme Court has focused on the specific relief requested by the plaintiff in its complaint and considered whether granting that relief would redress the injury alleged. For example, in Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, the Court found a “substantial likelihood” that a proposed nuclear power plant would not be constructed in the absence of a limitation of liability provided under the Price-Anderson Act. As a result, the neighbors of the proposed nuclear plant had standing to challenge the constitutionality of the Price-Anderson Act because the environmental and health injuries they would allegedly suffer from the operation of the plant would be redressed if the Court struck down the contested provisions of the Act.3

In contrast, in Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Environment, an environmental group sued a manufacturer for its past violations of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA).4 A citizen-suit provision of EPCRA authorizes suits against a company for its failure to submit information timely about the storage of hazardous chemicals, as well as toxic releases, at the company’s facilities.5 Although the company-defendant had later filed the overdue forms to address its violations of EPCRA,6 the plaintiffs asked the court to declare that the company had violated EPCRA and order various forms of injunctive and compensatory relief.7 The Court, noting that none of the requested forms of relief would reimburse the plaintiffs for losses caused by the company’s late reporting of its chemical information, found that it lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate the merits of the plaintiff’s claims.8 In other words, because the plaintiff’s requested relief, even if granted, could not remedy the plaintiffs’ alleged past injuries, the plaintiff’s injuries were not redressable, and they therefore lacked standing to sue. Furthermore, to the extent that the plaintiffs requested prospective relief in the form of an injunction preventing future harm, they lacked standing because they failed to allege continuing or threatened injury from an ongoing violation of EPCRA by the defendant that could be redressed by a court order granting such relief.9

Nonetheless, when a litigant faces the threat of future injury as a result of ongoing violations of federal law, its injuries may be redressable by injunctive relief or a civil penalty payable to the U.S. Treasury. In Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc., the Court considered whether a plaintiff who brought a citizen suit (i.e., a private action to enforce the law) under the Clean Water Act10 could demonstrate standing to sue a company in order to compel its compliance with the terms of a permit to reduce water pollution. The plaintiff argued that its injuries would be redressed by a civil penalty payable to the U.S. Treasury because those penalties, like injunctions, deter future violations.11 The Court agreed, holding that civil penalties, even if payable to the U.S. Treasury rather than the plaintiff, could prevent the threat of future injury rather than solely to serve as compensation for past injuries.12

A litigant may have more difficulty establishing redressability when it alleges an indirect injury from government action or inaction, and when redress would require actions by an independent third party not before the court. For instance, in Linda R.S. v. Richard D., the Supreme Court considered a Texas law imposing criminal sanctions on parents who failed to meet their child support obligations.13 Texas state courts had construed the law as imposing no duty of support on the parents of children born to unmarried parents, and the mother of an out-of-wedlock child challenged Texas’s refusal to enforce the law against her child’s absentee father.14 The Court held that the plaintiff had failed to allege facts sufficient to support judicial intervention because she did not show that her failure to obtain child support resulted from Texas’s decision.15 The Court noted that even in the unlikely event that the Court ordered the district attorney to enforce the law against the child’s father, the father would simply go to jail without being compelled to pay child support in order to get out of jail.16 Therefore, the plaintiff-mother’s injury was not redressable, as her requested injunctive relief against state officials could not compel the father (a third party) to redress her monetary injury through payment of child support.17

The Supreme Court has also held, however, that redressability may exist even when the litigant’s requested judicial relief would not completely redress its injury.18 In the 2007 case Massachusetts v. EPA, the Court held that the State of Massachusetts had standing to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s refusal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act (CAA).19 The Court determined that directing EPA to reexamine its refusal to regulate such emissions would redress the alleged risk of injury to plaintiffs’ interests from rising sea levels, even if judicial relief resulted in only incremental steps to slow or reduce global warming.20 In so holding, the Court rejected the argument that an EPA rule would fail to redress the state’s injury because (1) it would not affect emissions by the existing automobile fleet, and (2) other countries would continue to increase greenhouse gas emissions.21 Thus, the Court suggested that a litigant may establish that its injury is redressable even if it cannot show that a favorable judicial decision will completely redress the harm.22

Footnotes

1

Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 753 n.19 (1984).

2

Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t, 523 U.S. 83, 107 (1998) ( “Relief that does not remedy the injury suffered cannot bootstrap a plaintiff into federal court; that is the very essence of the redressability requirement.” ). See also Utah v. Evans, 536 U.S. 452, 459–64 (2002) (holding that the State of Utah had demonstrated redressability for standing purposes because of its reasonable belief that if it prevailed, an injunction directing the Secretary of Commerce to recalculate and recertify an official census count would likely lead to a reapportionment of congressional representatives in its favor—a result permitted by the statutes that set forth the census process); Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560–61 (1992).

3

438 U.S. 59, 74–81 (1978). See also Metro. Wash. Airports Auth. v. Citizens for the Abatement of Aircraft Noise, 501 U.S. 252, 264–65 (1991) (holding that individuals living under airplane flight paths could bring a constitutional challenge to a congressionally created “Board of Review” that had power to veto airport authority development plans because invalidation of the veto power could prevent the enactment of plans for further development and could thus redress the individuals’ alleged prospective injuries of increased air traffic, accident risks, noise, and pollution). Similarly, in a case where a creditor challenged a bankruptcy court’s structured dismissal of a corporate reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code that denied the creditor the opportunity to obtain a settlement or assert a claim with “litigation value,” the Court held that a decision in the creditor’s favor was likely to redress the loss. See Food Mktg. Inst. v. Argus Leader Media, No. 18-481, slip op. at 4–5 (U.S. June 24, 2019) (holding that a grocery retailers’ association had standing to appeal a lower court’s judgment directing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to disclose commercial information that could injure the retailers financially, even though the agency would retain discretion under the Freedom of Information Act to disclose the information if the Court reversed the lower court’s ruling, because the government had represented “unequivocally” that it would maintain the confidentiality of the contested data unless a court directed disclosure); Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp., No. 15-649, slip op. at 11 (U.S. Mar. 22, 2017) (holding that the “mere possibility” that a plaintiff’s injury will not be remedied by a favorable decision is insufficient to conclude the plaintiff lacks standing because of want of redressability). For other cases in which the Court accepted relatively tenuous connections between the litigant’s requested judicial relief and its alleged injury, see Watt v. Energy Action Educ. Found., 454 U.S. 151, 160–62 (1981) and Bryant v. Yellen, 447 U.S. 352, 366–68 (1980).

4

523 U.S. 83, 88 (1998).

5

See id. at 86–88.

6

Id. at 88.

7

Id. at 105.

8

Id. at 105–06, 109. Among other relief, the plaintiffs had requested a declaratory judgment that the company had violated EPCRA and various civil penalties. Although the requested civil penalties could be viewed as compensation to the plaintiffs, the Court noted that they were payable to the U.S. Treasury rather than the plaintiffs, and therefore could not remedy the plaintiff’s injury from the company’s late filing. Id. at 106. Instead, civil penalties paid to the government would vindicate only “the ‘undifferentiated public interest’ in faithful execution of EPCRA. This does not suffice.” Id.

9

Id. at 108–09. The Court also held that a plaintiff seeking to maintain standing solely to recover the costs of bringing suit cannot show redressability. Id. at 107.

10

The relevant Clean Water Act provision authorizes suit by “a person or persons having an interest which is or may be adversely affected.” 33 U.S.C. § 1365(a), (g).

11

Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 173 (2000).

12

Id. at 174, 185–86 ( “It can scarcely be doubted that, for a plaintiff who is injured or faces the threat of future injury due to illegal conduct ongoing at the time of suit, a sanction that effectively abates that conduct and prevents its recurrence provides a form of redress. Civil penalties can fit that description. To the extent that they encourage defendants to discontinue current violations and deter them from committing future ones, they afford redress to citizen plaintiffs who are injured or threatened with injury as a consequence of ongoing unlawful conduct.” ).

13

410 U.S. 614, 614–16 (1973).

14

Id.

15

Id. at 618.

16

Id. at 618–19.

17

Id.

18

Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497, 525–26 (2007).

19

Id. at 505–06.

20

Id. at 525–26 ( “While it may be true that regulating motor-vehicle emissions will not by itself reverse global warming, it by no means follows that we lack jurisdiction to decide whether EPA has a duty to take steps to slow or reduce it.” ). See also Larson v. Valente, 456 U.S. 228, 242–43 (1982) (holding that a church and its followers alleged a redressable injury from a state law requiring a church to register with, and report certain information to, the state if more than 50% of its contributions came from nonmembers, even though the Court’s declaration that the “50 percent rule” was unconstitutional would not necessarily exempt the church from the requirements of that law).

21

See Massachusetts, 549 U.S. at 525–26.

22

See id. See also Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, No. 19-1968, slip op. at 12 (U.S. Mar. 8, 2021) (holding that plaintiffs who requested nominal damages for a past violation of their First Amendment rights had established redressability for standing purposes).