The New Public Standing

Today's public litigants are not citizens or individual taxpayers who, suffering no injury of their own, seek instead to stand for the public. Instead, they are states that have suffered financial injuries. In recent years, states have brought many high-profile public law cases against the federal government based upon financial injuries. State standing to sue the federal government for financial injuries is the new public standing. This Articles goal is to offer a comprehensive account of the new public standing. It argues that we should not hope—or expect—that the federal courts will treat the new public standing with the disfavor they have shown to citizen and taxpayer standing. Nor, however, should we hope or expect that the federal courts will treat the new public standing as indistinguishable from private standing based upon financial injuries. One aspect of this thesis is doctrinal and normative. Under the U.S. Supreme Court's Article III jurisprudence, financial injuries are the paradigmatic example of an injury in fact that supports standing to sue, as contrasted with an ideological injury that does not suffice for standing. What makes the new public standing doctrinally difficult is that while some financial injuries to states mirror those to private parties, others do not. And what makes these cases normatively difficult is that the state attorneys general who sue based upon financial injuries to their states are ideological litigants. The new public standing thus requires us to rethink the terms of the debate about state standing to sue the federal government. Another aspect of this thesis is descriptive and positive. To ground its normative analysis, this Article attempts to identify the ideological, institutional, and political factors that have contributed to the new public standing and that will shape its future prospects. Analysis of these factors leads to the conclusion that the Court will preserve the new public standing while tinkering with its remedial scope. The new public standing will prove more durable than citizen and taxpayer standing for the public, but will not substitute for the promise of an individual standing upon her conscience in federal court.