holding that an Arizona teachers’ association did not have standing to challenge the State’s procedure for granting mineral leases that finance educational trust funds because the State could offset any increase by reducing other funding sources or could use the increase for something other than teacher salaries or benefits
How later courts described this case
- holding that an Arizona teachers’ association did not have standing to challenge the State’s procedure for granting mineral leases that finance educational trust funds because the State could offset any increase by reducing other funding sources or could use the increase for something other than teacher salaries or benefits
- stating that “state courts are not bound by the limitations of a case or controversy or other federal rules of justiciability even when they address issues of federal law, as when they are called upon to interpret the Constitution or, in this case, a federal statute”
- explaining that plaintiff’s theory of standing may not depend on “unfettered choices made by independent actors not before the courts and whose exercise of . . . discretion the courts cannot presume either to control or to predict.”
- explaining that the relative closeness between municipalities and their taxpayers justifies a more lenient test for establishing municipal taxpayer standing than for establishing state or federal taxpayer standing
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Disagreed with by United States Department of Labor v. Triplett, 494 U.S. 715 (1990)
We disagree with Justice Marshall’s view that ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U. S. 605 (1989), renders our inquiry into third-party standing inappropriate.
The opinion
Justice Brennan,
with whom Justice White, Justice Marshall, and Justice Blackmun join,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I join all but Part II-B-1 of the Court’s opinion. I disagree both with the view expressed in Justice Kennedy’s opinion that the plaintiffs below, particularly the Arizona Education Association, had no standing, and also with the decision to reach that issue. The Court holds in Part II-B-2 that the question whether the state-court plaintiffs had Article III standing is irrelevant when it is the defendants below who now invoke the authority of the federal courts. The dis *634 cussion of the standing question in Part II-B-1 is therefore unnecessary.