The Supreme Court backs away from the concept of "prudential" standing.

I'm reading the new case Lexmark International v. Static Control Components, a seemingly very boring case about toner cartridges. This is a unanimous opinion that's mostly about false or misleading conduct under the Lanham Act, which I'm not going to bother you about. I just want to point to the material about standing, which is of interest to those of us who follow constitutional law and federal courts.

If you are still reading, you probably know that there is a constitutional level to standing doctrine, which is very well articulated in the cases of the last 40 years. As the new case puts it:

From Article III’s limitation of the judicial power to resolving “Cases” and “Controversies,” and the separation-of-powers principles underlying that limitation, we have deduced a set of requirements that together make up the “irreducible constitutional minimum of standing.” Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560 (1992) . The plaintiff must have suffered or be imminently threatened with a concrete and particularized “injury in fact” that is fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant and likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision….

Then there's also what's referred to as "prudential," supposedly the sub-constitutional level of doctrine. This is much less well articulated and the new case — stressing the federal courts' "virtually unflagging" obligation to decide cases within their jurisdiction — backs away from the concept:

In recent decades...  we have adverted to a “prudential” branch of standing, a doctrine not derived from Article III and “not exhaustively defined” but encompassing (we have said) at least three broad principles: “ ‘the general prohibition on a litigant’s raising another person’s legal rights, the rule barring adjudication of generalized grievances more appropriately addressed in the representative branches, and the requirement that a plaintiff’s complaint fall within the zone of interests protected by the law invoked.’ ” Elk Grove Unified School Dist. v. Newdow, 542 U. S. 1, 12 (2004) (quoting Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 751 (1984) )…

Although we admittedly have placed [the zone-of-interest] test under the “prudential” rubric in the past, see, e.g., Elk Grove, it does not belong there any more than Associated General Contractors does. Whether a plaintiff comes within “the ‘zone of interests’ ” is an issue that requires us to determine, using traditional tools of statutory interpretation, whether a legislatively conferred cause of action encompasses a particular plaintiff’s claim. See Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83, and n. 2 (1998); Clarke v. Securities Industry Assn., 479 U. S. 388–395 (1987); Holmes, supra, at 288 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). As Judge Silberman of the D. C. Circuit recently observed, “ ‘prudential standing’ is a misnomer” as applied to the zone-of-interests analysis, which asks whether “this particular class of persons ha[s] a right to sue under this substantive statute.” Association of Battery Recyclers, Inc. v. EPA, 716 F. 3d 667, 675–676 (2013) (concurring opinion).

At this point there's a footnote:

The zone-of-interests test is not the only concept that we have previously classified as an aspect of "prudential standing" but for which, upon closer inspection, we have found that label inapt. Take, for example, our reluctance to entertain generalized grievances — i.e., suits "claiming only harm to [the plaintiff's] and every citizen's interest in proper application of the Constitution and laws, and seeking relief that no more directly and tangibly benefits him than it does the public at large." Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 573-574 (1992). While we have at times grounded our reluctance to entertain such suits in the "counsels of prudence" (albeit counsels "close[ly] relat[ed] to the policies reflected in" Article III), Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U. S. 464, 475 (1982), we have since held that such suits do not present constitutional "cases" or "controversies." See, e.g., Lance v. Coffman, 549 U. S. 437, 439 (2007) (per curiam); DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U. S. 332, 344-346 (2006); Defenders of Wildlife, supra, at 573-574. They are barred for constitutional reasons, not "prudential" ones. The limitations on third-party standing are harder to classify; we have observed that third-party standing is " 'closely related to the question whether a person in the litigant's position will have a right of action on the claim,' " Department of Labor v. Triplett, 494 U. S. 715, 721, n. ** (1990) (quoting Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 500, n. 12 (1975)), but most of our cases have not framed the inquiry in that way. See, e.g., Kowalski v. Tesmer, 543 U. S. 125, 128-129 (2004) (suggesting it is an element of "prudential standing"). This case does not present any issue of third-party standing, and consideration of that doctrine's proper place in the standing firmament can await another day.

ADDED: This may be the most boring post I've ever written... at least from the perspective of the general reader. But this is the kind of material I've taught in class for the last 30 years. And you should have see the part I edited out, like the news that toner is "the powdery ink that laser printers use to create images on paper."