Injury-in-fact and the Establishment Clause

• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020

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.

627