JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court.
I
Article IV, § 3, cl. 2, of the Constitution vests Congress with the "Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the . . . Property belonging to the United States." Shortly after the termination of hostilities in the Second World War, Congress enacted the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, 63 Stat. 377, as amended, 40 U. S. C. § 471 et seq. (1976 ed. and Supp. III). The Act was designed, in part, to provide "an economical and efficient system for . . . the disposal of surplus property." 63 Stat. 378, 40 U. S. C. § 471. In furtherance of this policy, federal agencies are directed to maintain adequate inventories of the property under their control and to identify excess property for transfer to other agencies able to use it. See 63 Stat. 384, 40 U. S. C. §§ 483(b), (c).
The Act authorizes the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (now the Secretary of Education
The property which spawned this litigation was acquired by the Department of the Army in 1942, as part of a larger tract of approximately 181 acres of land northwest of Philadelphia. The Army built on that land the Valley Forge General Hospital, and for 30 years thereafter, that hospital provided medical care for members of the Armed Forces. In April 1973, as part of a plan to reduce the number of military
The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) eventually assumed responsibility for disposing of portions of the property, and in August 1976, it conveyed a 77-acre tract to petitioner, the Valley Forge Christian College.
Petitioner is a nonprofit educational institution operating under the supervision of a religious order known as the Assemblies of God. By its own description, petitioner's purpose is "to offer systematic training on the collegiate level to men and women for Christian service as either ministers or laymen." App. 34. Its degree programs reflect this orientation by providing courses of study "to train leaders for church related ministries." Id., at 102. Faculty members
In September 1976, respondents Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc. (Americans United), and four of its employees, learned of the conveyance through a news release. Two months later, they brought suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, later transferred to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, to challenge the conveyance on the ground that it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
On petitioner's motion, the District Court granted summary judgment and dismissed the complaint. App. to Pet. for Cert. A42. The court found that respondents lacked standing to sue as taxpayers under Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83 (1968), and had "failed to allege that they have suffered any actual or concrete injury beyond a generalized grievance common to all taxpayers." App. to Pet. for Cert. A43.
Because of the unusually broad and novel view of standing to litigate a substantive question in the federal courts adopted by the Court of Appeals, we granted certiorari, 450 U.S. 909 (1981), and we now reverse.
II
Article III of the Constitution limits the "judicial power" of the United States to the resolution of "cases" and "controversies." The constitutional power of federal courts cannot be defined, and indeed has no substances, without reference to the necessity "to adjudge the legal rights of litigants in actual controversies." Liverpool S. S. Co. v. Commissioners of Emigration, 113 U.S. 33, 39 (1885). The requirements of Art. III are not satisfied merely because a party requests a court of the United States to declare its legal rights, and has couched that request for forms of relief historically associated with courts of law in terms that have a familiar ring to those trained in the legal process. The judicial power of the United States defined by Art. III is not an unconditioned authority to determine the constitutionality of legislative or executive acts. The power to declare the rights of individuals and to measure the authority of governments, this Court said 90 years ago, "is legitimate only in the last resort, and as a necessity in the determination of real, earnest and vital controversy." Chicago & Grand Trunk R. Co. v. Wellman, 143 U.S. 339, 345 (1892). Otherwise, the power "is not judicial. . . in the sense in which judicial power is granted by the Constitution to the courts of the United States." United States v. Ferreira, 13 How. 40 48 (1852).
As an incident to the elaboration of this bedrock requirement, this Court has always required that a litigant have "standing" to challenge the action sought to be adjudicated in the lawsuit. The term "standing" subsumes a blend of constitutional requirements and prudential considerations, see Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498 (1975), and it has not always been clear in the opinions of this Court whether particular features of the "standing" requirement have been required by Art. III ex proprio vigore, or whether they are requirements that the Court itself has erected and which were not compelled by the language of the Constitution. See Flast v. Cohen, supra, at 97.
The requirement of "actual injury redressable by the court," Simon, supra, at 39, serves several of the "implicit policies embodied in Article III," Flast, supra, at 96. It tends to assure that the legal questions presented to the court will be resolved, not in the rarified atmosphere of a debating society, but in a concrete factual context conducive to a realistic appreciation of the consequences of judicial action. The "standing" requirement serves other purposes. Because it assures an actual factual setting in which the litigant asserts a claim of injury in fact, a court may decide the case with some confidence that its decision will not pave the way for lawsuits which have some, but not all, of the facts of the case actually decided by the court.
The exercise of judicial power, which can so profoundly affect the lives, liberty, and property of those to whom it extends, is therefore restricted to litigants who can show "injury in fact" resulting from the action which they seek to have the court adjudicate.
The exercise of the judicial power also affects relationships between the coequal arms of the National Government. The effect is, of course, most vivid when a federal court declares unconstitutional an act of the Legislative or Executive Branch. While the exercise of that "ultimate and supreme function," Chicago & Grand Trunk R. Co. v. Wellman, supra, at 345, is a formidable means of vindicating individual rights, when employed unwisely or unnecessarily it is also the ultimate threat to the continued effectiveness of the federal courts in performing that role. While the propriety of such action by a federal court has been recognized since
Proper regard for the complex nature of our constitutional structure requires neither that the Judicial Branch shrink from a confrontation with the other two coequal branches of the Federal Government, nor that it hospitably accept for adjudication claims of constitutional violation by other branches of government where the claimant has not suffered cognizable injury. Thus, this Court has "refrain[ed] from passing upon the constitutionality of an act [of the representative branches] unless obliged to do so in the proper performance of our judicial function, when the question is raised by a party whose interests entitle him to raise it." Blair v. United States, 250 U.S. 273, 279 (1919). The importance of this precondition should not be underestimated as a means of "defin[ing] the role assigned to the judiciary in a tripartite allocation of power." Flast v. Cohen, supra, at 95.
Beyond the constitutional requirements, the federal judiciary has also adhered to a set of prudential principles that bear on the question of standing. Thus, this Court has held that "the plaintiff generally must assert his own legal rights and interests, and cannot rest his claim to relief on the legal rights or interests of third parties." Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S., at 499.
Merely to articulate these principles is to demonstrate their close relationship to the policies reflected in the Art. III requirement of actual or threatened injury amenable to judicial remedy. But neither the counsels of prudence nor the policies implicit in the "case or controversy" requirement should be mistaken for the rigorous Art. III requirements themselves. Satisfaction of the former cannot substitute for a demonstration of " `distinct and palpable injury' . . . that is likely to be redressed if the requested relief is granted." Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U. S., at 100 (quoting Warth v. Seldin, supra, at 501). That requirement states a limitation on judicial power, not merely a factor to be balanced in the weighing of so-called "prudential" considerations.
We need not mince words when we say that the concept of "Art. III standing" has not been defined with complete consistency in all of the various cases decided by this Court which have discussed it, nor when we say that this very fact is probably proof that the concept cannot be reduced to a one-sentence or one-paragraph definition. But of one thing we may be sure: Those who do not possess Art. III standing may
III
The injury alleged by respondents in their amended complaint is the "depriv[ation] of the fair and constitutional use of [their] tax dollar." App. 10.
Following the decision in Frothingham, the Court confirmed that the expenditure of public funds in an allegedly unconstitutional manner is not an injury sufficient to confer standing, even though the plaintiff contributes to the public coffers as a taxpayer. In Doremus v. Board of Education, 342 U.S. 429 (1952), plaintiffs brought suit as citizens and taxpayers, claiming that a New Jersey law which authorized public school teachers in the classroom to read passages from
In short, the Court found that plaintiffs' grievance was "not a direct dollars-and-cents injury but is a religious difference." 342 U. S., at 434. A case or controversy did not exist, even though the "clash of interests [was] real and . . . strong." Id., at 436 (Douglas, J., dissenting).
The Court again visited the problem of taxpayer standing in Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83 (1968). The taxpayer plaintiffs in Flast sought to enjoin the expenditure of federal funds under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which they alleged were being used to support religious schools in violation of the Establishment Clause. The Court developed a two-part test to determine whether the plaintiffs had standing to sue. First, because a taxpayer alleges injury only by virtue of his liability for taxes, the Court held that "a taxpayer will be a proper party to allege the unconstitutionality only of exercises of congressional power under the taxing and spending clause of Art. I, § 8, of the Constitution."
The plaintiffs in Flast satisfied this test because "[t]heir constitutional challenge [was] made to an exercise by Congress of its power under Art. I, § 8, to spend for the general welfare," id., at 103, and because the Establishment Clause, on which plaintiffs' complaint rested, "operates as a specific constitutional limitation upon the exercise by Congress of the taxing and spending power conferred by Art. I, § 8," id., at 104. The Court distinguished Frothingham v. Mellon, supra, on the ground that Mrs. Frothingham had relied, not on a specific limitation on the power to tax and spend, but on a more general claim based on the Due Process Clause. 392 U. S., at 105. Thus, the Court reaffirmed that the "case or controversy" aspect of standing is unsatisfied "where a taxpayer seeks to employ a federal court as a forum in which to air his generalized grievances about the conduct of government or the allocation of power in the Federal System." Id., at 106.
Unlike the plaintiffs in Flast, respondents fail the first prong of the test for taxpayer standing. Their claim is deficient in two respects. First, the source of their complaint is not a congressional action, but a decision by HEW to transfer a parcel of federal property.
The claim in Schlesinger was marred by the same deficiency. Plaintiffs in that case argued that the Incompatibility Clause of Art. I
IV
Although the Court of Appeals properly doubted respondents' ability to establish standing solely on the basis of their taxpayer status, it considered their allegations of taxpayer injury to be "essentially an assumed role." 619 F. 2d, at 261.
In the court's view, respondents had established standing by virtue of an " `injury in fact' to their shared individuated right to a government that `shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.' " Ibid. The court distinguished this "injury" from "the question of `citizen standing' as such." Id., at 262. Although citizens generally could not establish standing simply by claiming an interest in governmental observance of the Constitution, respondents had "set forth instead a particular and concrete injury" to a "personal constitutional right." Id., at 265.
The Court of Appeals was surely correct in recognizing that the Art. III requirements of standing are not satisfied by "the abstract injury in nonobservance of the Constitution asserted by . . . citizens." Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War, 418 U. S., at 223, n. 13. This Court repeatedly has rejected claims of standing predicated on " `the right, possessed by every citizen, to require that the
In finding that respondents had alleged something more than "the generalized interest of all citizens in constitutional governance," Schlesinger, supra, at 217, the Court of Appeals relied on factual differences which we do not think amount to legal distinctions. The court decided that respondents' claim differed from those in Schlesinger and Richardson, which were predicated, respectively, on the Incompatibility and Accounts Clauses, because "it is at the very least arguable that the Establishment Clause creates in each citizen a `personal constitutional right' to a government that does not establish religion." 619 F. 2d, at 265 (footnote omitted). The court found it unnecessary to determine whether this "arguable" proposition was correct, since it judged the mere allegation of a legal right sufficient to confer standing.
This reasoning process merely disguises, we think with a rather thin veil, the inconsistency of the court's results with our decisions in Schlesinger and Richardson. The plaintiffs in those cases plainly asserted a "personal right" to have the Government act in accordance with their views of the Constitution; indeed, we see no barrier to the assertion of such claims with respect to any constitutional provision. But assertion of a right to a particular kind of Government conduct, which the Government has violated by acting differently, cannot alone satisfy the requirements of Art. III without draining those requirements of meaning.
The complaint in this case shares a common deficiency with those in Schlesinger and Richardson. Although respondents claim that the Constitution has been violated, they claim nothing else. They fail to identify any personal injury suffered by them as a consequence of the alleged constitutional error, other than the psychological consequence presumably produced by observation of conduct with which one disagrees. That is not an injury sufficient to confer standing under Art. III, even though the disagreement is phrased in
In reaching this conclusion, we do not retreat from our earlier holdings that standing may be predicated on noneconomic injury. See, e. g., United States v. SCRAP, 412 U. S., at 686-688; Association of Data Processing Service Orgs. v. Camp, 397 U. S., at 153-154. We simply cannot see that respondents have alleged an injury of any kind, economic or otherwise, sufficient to confer standing.
V
The Court of Appeals in this case ignored unambiguous limitations on taxpayer and citizen standing. It appears to have done so out of the conviction that enforcement of the Establishment Clause demands special exceptions from the requirement that a plaintiff allege " `distinct and palpable injury to himself,' . . . that is likely to be redressed if the requested relief is granted." Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U. S., at 100 (quoting Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S., at 501). The court derived precedential comfort from Flast v. Cohen: "The underlying justification for according standing in Flast it seems, was the implicit recognition that the Establishment Clause does create in every citizen a personal constitutional right, such that any citizen, including taxpayers, may contest under that clause the constitutionality of federal expenditures." 619 F. 2d, at 262.
Implicit in the foregoing is the philosophy that the business of the federal courts is correcting constitutional errors, and that "cases and controversies" are at best merely convenient vehicles for doing so and at worst nuisances that may be dispensed with when they become obstacles to that transcendent endeavor. This philosophy has no place in our constitutional scheme. It does not become more palatable when the underlying merits concern the Establishment Clause. Respondents' claim of standing implicitly rests on the presumption that violations of the Establishment Clause typically will not cause injury sufficient to confer standing under the "traditional" view of Art. III. But "[t]he assumption that if respondents have no standing to sue, no one would have standing, is not a reason to find standing." Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War, 418 U. S., at 227. This view would convert standing into a requirement that must be observed only when satisfied. Moreover, we are unwilling to assume that injured parties are nonexistent simply because they have not joined respondents in their suit. The law of averages is not a substitute for standing.
Were we to accept respondents' claim of standing in this case, there would be no principled basis for confining our exception to litigants relying on the Establishment Clause. Ultimately, that exception derives from the idea that the judicial power requires nothing more for its invocation than important issues and able litigants.
It is so ordered.
A plaintiff's standing is a jurisdictional matter for Art. III courts, and thus a "threshold question" to be resolved before turning attention to more "substantive" issues. See Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S. 614, 616 (1973). But in consequence there is an impulse to decide difficult questions of substantive law obliquely in the course of opinions purporting to do nothing more than determine what the Court labels "standing"; this accounts for the phenomenon of opinions, such as the one today, that tend merely to obfuscate, rather than inform, our understanding of the meaning of rights under the law. The serious by-product of that practice is that the Court disregards its constitutional responsibility when, by failing to acknowledge the protections afforded by the Constitution, it uses "standing to slam the courthouse door against plaintiffs who are entitled to full consideration of their claims on the merits."
The opinion of the Court is a stark example of this unfortunate trend of resolving cases at the "threshold" while obscuring
I
There is now much in the way of settled doctrine in our understanding of the injury-in-fact requirement of Art. III. At the core is the irreducible minimum that persons seeking judicial relief from an Art. III court have "such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends . . . ." Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204 (1962). See Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, Inc., 438 U.S. 59, 72 (1978). Cases of this Court have identified the two essential components of this "personal stake" requirement. Plaintiff must have suffered, or be threatened with, some "distinct and palpable injury," Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 501 (1975). In addition, there must be some causal connection between plaintiff's asserted injury and defendant's challenged action. Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Org., 426 U.S. 26, 41 (1976); Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 261 (1977). The Constitution requires an Art. III court to ascertain that both requirements are met before proceeding to exercise its authority on behalf of any plaintiff, whether the form of relief requested is equitable or monetary.
But the existence of Art. III injury "often turns on the nature and source of the claim asserted." Warth v. Seldin,
It may of course happen that a person believing himself injured in some obscure manner by government action will be held to have no legal right under the constitutional or statutory provision upon which he relies, and will not be permitted to complain of the invasion of another person's "rights."
The "case and controversy" limitation of Art. III overrides no other provision of the Constitution.
With these observations in mind, I turn to the problem of taxpayer standing in general, and this case in particular.
II
A
Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447 (1923), involved a challenge to the Maternity Act of 1921, 42 Stat. 224, which provided financial grants to States that agreed to cooperate in programs designed to reduce infant and maternal mortality. Appellant contended that Congress, in enacting the program, had exceeded its authority under Art. I, and had intruded on authority reserved to the States. The Court described Mrs. Frothingham's claim as follows:
The Court conceded that it had historically treated the interest of a municipal taxpayer in the application of the municipality's funds as sufficiently direct and immediate to warrant injunctive relief to prevent misuse. Ibid. Bradfield v. Roberts, 175 U.S. 291 (1899), in which the Court permitted a federal taxpayer to present an Establishment Clause challenge to the use of federal money for the construction of hospital buildings in the District of Columbia, was held to fall within this rule because it was appropriate to treat the District of Columbia as a municipality.
After noting the importance of judicial restraint, the Court concluded:
Frothingham's reasoning remains obscure.
Frothingham also stressed the indirectness of the taxpayer's injury. But, as a matter of Art. III standing, if the causal relationship is sufficiently certain, the length of the causal chain is irrelevant.
The explanation for the limit on federal taxpayer "standing" imposed by Frothingham must be sought in more substantive realms. Justice Harlan, dissenting in Flast, came close to identifying what I consider the unstated premise of the Frothingham rule:
The Frothingham rule may be seen as founded solely on the prudential judgment by the Court that precipitate and unnecessary interference in the activities of a coequal branch of government should be avoided. Alternatively, Frothingham may be construed as resting upon an unarticulated, constitutionally established barrier between Congress' power to tax and its power to spend, which barrier makes it analytically impossible to mount an assault on the former through a challenge to the latter. But it is sufficient for present purposes to say that Frothingham held that the federal taxpayer has no continuing legal interest in the affairs of the Treasury analogous to a shareholder's continuing interest in the conduct of a corporation.
Whatever its provenance, the general rule of Frothingham displays sound judgment: Courts must be circumspect in dealing with the taxing power in order to avoid unnecessary intrusion into the functions of the Legislative and Executive Branches. Congress' purpose in taxing will not ordinarily affect the validity of the tax. Unless the tax operates unconstitutionally, see, e. g., Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105 (1943), the taxpayer may not object to the use of his funds. Mrs. Frothingham's argument, that the use of tax funds for purposes unauthorized by the Constitution amounted to a violation of due process, did not provide her with the required legal interest because the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment does not protect taxpayers against increases in tax liability. See Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S., at 105. Mrs. Frothingham's claim was thus reduced
B
In 1947, nine Justices of this Court recognized that the Establishment Clause does impose a very definite restriction on the power to tax.
The Members of the Court could not have been more explicit. "One of our basic rights is to be free of taxation to support a transgression of the constitutional command that the authorities `shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' " Id., at 22 (Jackson, J., dissenting). "[A]part from efforts to inject religious training or exercises and sectarian issues into the public schools, the only serious threat to maintaining that complete and permanent separation of religion and civil power which the First Amendment commands is through the use of the taxing power to support religion, religious establishments, or establishments having a religious foundation whatever their form or special religious function. . . . [M]oney taken by taxation from one is not to be used or given to support another's religious training of belief, or indeed one's own." Id., at 44 (Rutledge, J., dissenting).
In determining whether the law challenged in Everson was one "respecting an establishment of religion," the Court did not fail to examine the historic meaning of the constitutional language, "particularly with respect to the imposition of taxes." Id., at 8. For as Justice Rutledge pointed out in his dissent: "No provision of the Constitution is more closely tied to or given content by its generating history than the religious clause of the First Amendment. It is at once the refined product and the terse summation of that history." Id., at 33. That history bears a brief repetition in the present context.
Many of the early settlers of this Nation came here to escape the tyranny of laws that compelled the support of government-sponsored churches and that inflicted punishments for the failure to pay establishment taxes and tithes. Id., at 8-9. But the inhabitants of the various Colonies soon displayed
In 1784-1785, before the adoption of the Constitution, the continuing conflict between those who saw state aid to religion as but the natural expression of "commonly shared" religious sentiments, and those who saw such support as a threat to the very notion of civil government, culminated in the battle fought in the Virginia House of Delegates over "a bill establishing provision for teachers of the Christian religion."
Its operative language emphatically stated:
Justice Rutledge summed up Madison's views in the following terms:
It is clear, in the light of this history, that one of the primary purposes of the Establishment Clause was to prevent the use of tax moneys for religious purposes. The taxpayer was the direct and intended beneficiary of the prohibition on financial aid to religion.
C
In Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83 (1968), federal taxpayers sought to challenge the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare's administration of the Elementary and Secondary
The Justices who participated in Flast were not unaware of the Court's continued recognition of a federally cognizable "case or controversy" when a local taxpayer seeks to challenge as unconstitutional the use of a municipality's funds —
It is at once apparent that the test of standing formulated by the Court in Flast sought to reconcile the developing doctrine of taxpayer "standing" with the Court's historical understanding that the Establishment Clause was intended to prohibit the Federal Government from using tax funds for the advancement of religion, and thus the constitutional imperative of taxpayer standing in certain cases brought pursuant to the Establishment Clause. The two-pronged "nexus" test offered by the Court, despite its general language,
It may be that Congress can tax for almost any reason, or for no reason at all. There is, so far as I have been able to discern, but one constitutionally imposed limit on that authority. Congress cannot use tax money to support a church, or to encourage religion. That is "the forbidden exaction." Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S., at 45 (Rutledge, J., dissenting) (emphasis added). See Flast, supra, at 115-116 (Fortas, J., concurring). In absolute terms the history of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment makes this clear. History also makes it clear that the federal taxpayer is a singularly "proper and appropriate party to invoke a federal court's jurisdiction" to challenge a federal bestowal of largesse as a violation of the Establishment Clause. Each, and indeed every, federal taxpayer suffers precisely the injury that the Establishment Clause guards against when the Federal Government directs that funds be taken from the pocketbooks of the citizenry and placed into the coffers of the ministry.
A taxpayer cannot be asked to raise his objection to such use of his funds at the time he pays his tax. Apart from the unlikely circumstance in which the Government announced in advance that a particular levy would be used for religious subsidies, taxpayers could hardly assert that they were being injured until the Government actually lent its support to a religious venture. Nor would it be reasonable to require him to address his claim to those officials charged with the collection
III
Blind to history, the Court attempts to distinguish this case from Flast by wrenching snippets of language from our opinions, and by perfunctorily applying that language under color of the first prong of Flast's two-part nexus test. The tortuous distinctions thus produced are specious, at best: at worst, they are pernicious to our constitutional heritage.
First, the Court finds this case different from Flast because here the "source of [plaintiffs'] complaint is not a congressional action, but a decision by HEW to transfer a parcel of federal property." Ante, at 479 (emphasis added). This attempt at distinction cannot withstand scrutiny. Flast involved a challenge to the actions of the Commissioner of Education, and other officials of HEW, in disbursing funds under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to "religious and sectarian" schools. Plaintiffs disclaimed "any intent[ion] to challenge . . . all programs under . . . the Act." Flast, supra, at 87. Rather, they claimed that defendant-administrators' approval of such expenditures was not authorized by the Act, or alternatively, to the extent the expenditures were authorized, the Act was "unconstitutional and void." Ibid. In the present case, respondents challenge HEW's grant of property pursuant to the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, seeking to enjoin HEW "from making a grant of this and other property to the [defendant] so long as such a grant will violate the Establishment Clause." App. 12. It may be that the Court is concerned with the adequacy of respondents' pleading; respondents
More fundamentally, no clear division can be drawn in this context between actions of the Legislative Branch and those of the Executive Branch. To be sure, the First Amendment is phrased as a restriction on Congress' legislative authority; this is only natural since the Constitution assigns the authority to legislate and appropriate only to the Congress. But it is difficult to conceive of an expenditure for which the last governmental actor, either implementing directly the legislative will, or acting within the scope of legislatively delegated authority, is not an Executive Branch official. The First Amendment binds the Government as a whole, regardless of which branch is at work in a particular instance.
The Court's second purported distinction between this case and Flast is equally unavailing. The majority finds it "decisive" that the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949 "was an evident exercise of Congress' power under the Property Clause, Art. IV, § 3, cl. 2," ante, at 480, while the Government action in Flast was taken under Art. I, § 8. The Court relies on United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166 (1974), and Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208 (1974), to support the distinction between the two Clauses, nothing that those cases involved alleged deviations from the requirements of Art. I, § 9, cl. 7, and Art. I, § 6, cl. 2, respectively. The standing defect in each case was not, however, the failure to allege a violation of the Spending Clause; rather, the taxpayers in those cases had not complained of the distribution of Government largesse, and thus failed to meet the essential requirement of taxpayer standing recognized in Doremus.
It can make no constitutional difference in the case before us whether the donation to the petitioner here was in the form of a cash grant to build a facility, see Tilton v. Richardson,
IV
Plainly hostile to the Framers' understanding of the Establishment Clause, and Flast's enforcement of that understanding, the Court vents that hostility under the guise of standing, "to slam the courthouse door against plaintiffs who [as the Framers intended] are entitled to full consideration of their [Establishment Clause] claims on the merits." Barlow v. Collins, 397 U.S. 159, 178 (1970) (BRENNAN, J., concurring in result and dissenting). Therefore, I dissent.
JUSTICE STEVENS, dissenting.
In Parts I, II, and III of his dissenting opinion, JUSTICE BRENNAN demonstrates that respondent taxpayers have standing to mount an Establishment Clause challenge against the Federal Government's transfer of property worth $1,300,000 to the Assemblies of God. For the Court to hold
One cannot read the Court's opinion and the concurring opinions of Justice Stewart and Justice Fortas in Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, without forming the firm conclusion that the plaintiffs' invocation of the Establishment Clause was of decisive importance in resolving the standing issue in that case. Justice Fortas made this point directly:
Today the Court holds, in effect, that the Judiciary has no greater role in enforcing the Establishment Clause than in enforcing other "norm[s] of conduct which the Federal Government is bound to honor," ante, at 484, such as the Accounts Clause, United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, and the Incompatibility Clause, Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208. Ironically, however, its decision rests on the premise that the difference between a disposition of funds pursuant to the Spending Clause and a disposition of realty pursuant to the Property Clause is of fundamental jurisprudential significance. With all due respect, I am persuaded that the essential holding of Flast v. Cohen attaches special importance to the Establishment Clause and does not permit the drawing of a tenuous distinction between the Spending Clause and the Property Clause.
For this reason, and for the reasons stated in Parts I, II, and III of JUSTICE BRENNAN'S opinion, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
FootNotes
However appealing this reconstruction of precedent may be, it bears little resemblance to the cases on which it purports to rest. Frothingham and Flast were decisions that plainly turned on standing, and just as plainly they rejected any notion that the Art. III requirement of direct injury is satisfied by a taxpayer who contends "that the Federal Government has exceeded the bounds of the law in allocating its largesse." Post, at 508. Moreover, although the dissent's view may lead to a result satisfying to many in this case, it is not evident how its substitution of "legal interest," post, at 499, for "standing" enhances "our understanding of the meaning of rights under law," post, at 490. Logically, the dissent must shoulder the burden of explaining why taxpayers with standing have no "legal interest" in congressional expenditures except when it is possible to allege a violation of the Establishment Clause: yet it does not attempt to do so.
Nor does the dissent's interpretation of standing adequately explain cases such as Schlesinger and Richardson. According to the dissent, the taxpayer plaintiffs in those cases lacked standing, not because they failed to challenge an exercise of the spending power, but because they did not complain of "the distribution of Government largesse." Post, at 511. And yet if the standing of a taxpayer is established by his "continuing stake. . . in the disposition of the Treasury to which he has contributed his taxes," post, at 497-498, it would seem to follow that he can assert a right to examine the budget of the CIA, as in Richardson, see 418 U. S., at 170, and a right to argue that Members of Congress cannot claim Reserve pay from the Government, as in Schlesinger, see 418 U. S., at 211. Of course, both claims have been rejected, precisely because Art. III requires a demonstration of redressable injury that is not satisfied by a claim that tax moneys have been spent unlawfully.
"We have no doubt about the sincerity of respondents' stated objectives and the depth of their commitment to them. But the essence of standing `is not a question of motivation but of possession of the requisite . . . interest that is, or is threatened to be, injured by the unconstitutional conduct.' Doremus v. Board of Education, 342 U.S. 429, 435 (1952)." Id., at 225-226.
"It goes without saying that the laws and practices involved here can be challenged only by persons having standing to complain. . . . The parties here are school children and their parents, who are directly affected by the laws and practices against which their complaints are directed. These interests surely suffice to give the parties standing to complain." Id., at 224, n. 9.
The Court also drew a comparison with Doremus v. Board of Education, 342 U.S. 429 (1952), in which the identical substantive issues were raised, but in which the appeal was "dismissed upon the graduation of the school child involved and because of the appellants' failure to establish standing as taxpayers." 374 U. S., at 224, n. 9. The Court's discussion of the standing issue is not extensive, but it is sufficient to show the error in respondents' broad reading of the phrase "spiritual stake." The plaintiffs in Schempp had standing, not because their complaint rested on the Establishment Clause — for as Doremus demonstrated, that is insufficient — but because impressionable schoolchildren were subjected to unwelcome religious exercises or were forced to assume special burdens to avoid them. Respondents have alleged no comparable injury.
"A litigant ordinarily has standing to challenge a governmental action of a sort that, if taken by a private person, would create a right of action cognizable by the courts. Or standing may be based on an interest created by the Constitution or a statute." Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 152 (1951) (concurring opinion) (citations omitted). In identifying the types of injuries that might be recognized in private law actions as a basis for suits against the Government, Justice Frankfurter felt free to draw on principles of "common law." Id., at 152-153, 157-160.
With the understanding that "the basic practical and prudential concerns underlying the standing doctrine are generally satisfied when the constitutional requisites are met," id., at 81, we have only rarely interposed a bar to "third-party standing," particularly when constitutional violations are alleged. Indeed, the only firm exception to this generally permissive attitude toward third-party suits is the restriction on taxpayer suits. Id., at 79-81.
In each of the above-cited cases in which standing was denied, the difficulty was that an intermediate link in the causal chain — a third party beyond the control of the court — might serve to bar effective relief. Even if the court acceded to plaintiffs' view of the law, the court's decree might prove ineffectual to relieve plaintiffs' injury because of the independent action of some third party. See 426 U. S., at 41-42; Warth v. Seldin, supra, at 505-507. The situation of the taxpayer is not comparable because there is no problem of intervening cause. The defendant has the full power to correct the plaintiff's difficulty and, if the court concludes that as a matter of law and fact plaintiff is indeed required to provide defendant redress, it has the power to provide relief. The factual aspect of the causal connection is sure.
"And though we well know that this Assembly, enacted by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act to be irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right." 12 Hening's Stat. 86.
By incorporation of its principles in the Bill of Rights, the bill was transformed from mere hortatory expression, into a guarantee of lasting and binding rights against the Government.
"A subsidy involves the direct transfer of public monies to the subsidized enterprise and uses resources exacted from taxpayers as a whole. An exemption, on the other hand, involves no such transfer. It assists the exempted enterprise only passively, by relieving a privately funded venture of the burden of paying taxes. In other words, `[i]n the case of direct subsidy, the state forcibly diverts the income of both believers and nonbelievers to churches,' while `[i]n the case of an exemption, the state merely refrains from diverting to its own uses income independently generated by the churches through voluntary contributions.' " Walz v. Tax Comm'n of New York City, 397 U.S. 664, 690-691 (1970) (BRENNAN, J., concurring) (footnote omitted), quoting Gianella, Religious Liberty, Nonestablishment, and Doctrinal Development, pt. 2, 81 Harv. L. Rev. 513, 533 (1968).
Of course, irrespective of the taxpayers' stake in the controversy, in terms of the prohibition on government action imposed by the Establishment Clause, there is also a qualitative difference between a subsidy and an exemption. Ibid.
"There is no allegation that this activity is supported by any separate tax or paid for from any particular appropriation or that it adds any sum whatever to the cost of conducting the school. No information is given as to what kind of taxes are paid by appellants and there is no averment that the Bible reading increases any tax they do pay or that as taxpayers they are, will, or possibly can be out of pocket because of it." Id., at 433.
The Court had no difficulty distinguishing Everson:
"Everson showed a measurable appropriation or disbursement of school-district funds occasioned solely by the activities complained of. This complaint does not." 342 U. S., at 434.
The difference between the two cases is relevant to the "standing" of taxpayers generally and most especially to taxpayers asserting claims under the Establishment Clause, for it is clear that even under the Establishment Clause the taxpayer's protection was against the use of his funds and not against the conduct of the government generally. The distinction between Doremus and Everson may be phrased alternatively: Everson was injured in a manner comprehended by the Establishment Clause, and Doremus was not.
"We have noted that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment does specifically limit the taxing and spending power conferred by Art. I, § 8. Whether the Constitution contains other specific limitations can be determined only in the context of future cases. However, whenever such specific limitations are found, we believe a taxpayer will have a clear stake as a taxpayer in assuring that they are not breached by Congress. Consequently, we hold that a taxpayer will have standing consistent with Article III to invoke federal judicial power when he alleges that congressional action under the taxing and spending clause is in derogation of those constitutional provision which operate to restrict the exercise of the taxing and spending power. The taxpayer's allegation in such cases would be that his tax money is being extracted and spent in violation of specific constitutional protections against such abuses of legislative power." 392 U. S., at 105-106.
In the years since the announcement of the Flast test we have yet to recognize a similar restriction on Congress' power to tax, and I know of none. Nevertheless, like the Justices who joined in the Court opinion in Flast, I remain reluctant to rule out the possibility.
The Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949 clearly requires that, whenever possible, fair market value is to be received for property transferred pursuant to its provisions. See 40 U. S. C. §§ 484(e)(1), 484(e)(3)(G). Proceeds "from any sale, lease, or other disposition of surplus property, shall be covered into the Treasury as miscellaneous receipts . . . ." 40 U. S. C. § 485(a).
The Act provides, however, that "surplus real property, including buildings, fixtures and equipment situated thereon" may be designated by HEW as necessary for "school, classroom, or other educational use." 40 U. S. C. § 484(k)(1). Such property may be transferred to a "nonprofit educational institution." 40 U. S. C. § 484(k)(1)(A). In fixing the price of such property, the Secretary is required to consider any benefit that may accrue to the United States from the use of the property. 40 U. S. C. § 484(k)(1)(C). By failing to require any payment from petitioner college, the Secretary apparently determined that the benefit to the United States exceeded the fair market value. But it is entirely clear from Tilton that if the facility is and was used for sectarian purposes, the Government was required to obtain full market value at the time such use commences.
"[T]he bill in reserving a certain parcel of land of the United States for the use of said [church] comprises a principle and precedent for the appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies, contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that `Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.' " 1 J. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents 490 (1897).
Nor has Congress perceived a distinction between an appropriation of money and an appropriation of property. For example, in 1896 Congress included in its Appropriation Act for the District of Columbia a statement declaring it "to be the policy of the Government of the United States to make no appropriation of money or property for the purpose of founding, maintaining, or aiding by payment for services, expenses, or otherwise, any church or religious denomination, or any institution or society which is under sectarian or ecclesiastical control." 29 Stat. 411. See Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 648 (1971) (opinion of BRENNAN, J.).
Comment
User Comments