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Washington Law Review

Abstract

In 2021, the United States Supreme Court issued a controversial opinion with the potential to constrict the standing doctrine. TransUnion v. Ramirez appeared to alter standing’s “concrete harm” requirement, which would significantly restrict plaintiffs’ ability to invoke the jurisdiction of federal district courts. Building off its 2016 case, Spokeo v. Robins, the Court declared that intangible harms are only concrete when “plaintiffs have identified a close historical or common-law analog[] for their asserted injury.” The “common-law analog[]” required a “close relationship to harms traditionally recognized as providing a basis for lawsuits in American courts.” The Court mandated this requirement even for statutory harms, despite Congress’s long-held power to elevate harms to the level of concrete. The Court applied this rationale to a statutory right to information, implying that such informational harms are not concrete on their own, absent adverse effects. Subsequently, the circuits split on the status of informational harms, and prominent scholars warned of the holding’s detrimental effects on important areas of law. One area of impact is environmental law, where cases can involve harm to statutory rights created by modern pollution control and natural resources statutes.

This Comment addresses the implications of TransUnion, detailing how a broad reading of the case would drastically limit standing in environmental lawsuits. It argues that the broad interpretation of TransUnion would fundamentally conflict with historical precedent and the separation of powers, and offers a more natural approach to understanding TransUnion that would not seriously affect environmental law. This Comment concludes that a narrow reading of TransUnion better reconciles the case’s essential holding with prior precedent and Congress’s powers.

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