STANDING OVERVIEW

There are three types of standing 1) Constitutional Standing, 2) Associational standing; and 3) Prudient Standing. Both Associational and and Prudient standing are Civil types of Standing. It is important to understand the difference between the types of standing because without standing the court is unable to hear the case. 

Constitutional standing 

The issue is who can bring a claim, action, suit before the courts and the answer can be found in U.S. Constitution Article III Clause 2 which states the following: 

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;- to all cause of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;- to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; - to Controversies between  two or more States; - between a State and Citizens of another state; - between Citizens of different States;-between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States; and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

To prove that a person as standing to bring a claim before court, the person must meet all three elements: 1) Plaintiff must have suffered an ‘injury-in-fact’- an invasion of a legally protected interest, which is a) concrete and particularized and b) actual or imminent; 2) Injury must be ‘fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant, and not the result of an independent action of a third party not before the court; 3) Redressability is likely, not merely speculative, by a favorable decision. It is the party who is invoking federal jurisdiction that bears the burden of proof.

civil standing 

There are two different kinds of standing, 1) associational and 2) prudential. 

Associational standing allows an organization such as Mercy for Animals or Humane Society of the United States to “sue on behalf of an injury to one or more of its members.” There are three elements an organization must meet to have associational standing on behalf of its members: “1) its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right; (2) the interests it seeks to protect are germane to the organization's purpose; and (3) neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit.” In associational or third party standing is an important tool for many animal and environmental groups giving them another option beyond individual civil cases and criminal cases brought by the government. 

Whereas prudential standing, “prudential rules of self-restraint,” that bar standing to those “ill-suited to litigate the claims they assert.” Prudential standing incorporates three (3) core principles: “(i) generalized grievances; (ii) the zone of interests; and (iii) third-party standing.” In essence, prudential standing is an exception to burden of personal injury-in-fact in constitutional standing by using the zone of interests.

Zone of interest is defined as a type of interests or concerns that a law is intended to regulate or protect.  The law can be a constitutional provision or legislative statute.  To have standing when challenging state action based on a law, the plaintiff's injury must fall under the zone of interests protected by that law.

Meaning the breath of the zone of interest varies according the provision of law that is at issue. The zone of interests is determined by a two (2) prong test in which the court must determine: “(1) whether the complainant adequately alleges an injury in fact; and (2) whether the alleged injury is to an interest arguably within the zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the statute or constitutional guarantee in question.”

[5] 42 Hastings Constitutional L. Quarterly at 100.