Injury-in-fact and the Establishment Clause

Injury-in-Fact and the Establishment Clause
CONNOR SUOZZO*
ABSTRACT
In his concurrence in American Legion v. American Humanist Ass’n, 139
S. Ct. 2067 (2019), Justice Gorsuch argued that the respondents’ regular con-
tact with a forty-foot cross at a traff‌ic-heavy intersection did not suff‌iciently
confer standing to sue for an Establishment Clause violation. Their status as
“offended observers,” he wrote, did not satisfy the usual requirement of a con-
crete and particularized injury-in-fact. I argue in this note that the respondents
did suffer an injury-in-fact, as the feeling of exclusion, though intangible, is
nonetheless a real harm. I further argue that Congress has the power to def‌ine
injuries suff‌icient to confer Article III standing and can do so by creating sub-
stantive rights. In this vein, the Framers arguably recognized a new kind of
injury by ratifying the Establishment Clause, conferring standing on a class of
plaintiffs that would otherwise have suffered no cognizable injury.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 628
I. BACKGROUND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 628
A. Standing and the Injury-in-Fact Requirement . . . . . . . . . . . . . 628
B. American Legion v. American Humanist Association. . . . . . . . 630
II. DISCUSSION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 631
A. American Legion Plaintiffs’ Standing without Reference to the
Constitutional Right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 631
B. Non-exclusivity of Courts’ Power to Def‌ine Concrete
Injuries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 634
1. Supreme Court Precedent Recognizes Congress’s Role of
Conferring Standing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635
2. Creating Injuries-in-Fact by Creating Substantive Rights. . . 636
B. Context-Specif‌ic Approach to Standing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 638
C. Congress Should Def‌ine Intangible Injuries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 639
* Georgetown Law, J.D. expected 2020. I appreciate the guidance and support from the editors of
the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy.
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