Sandra Day O'Connor

“ Thus, respondents do not allege that their children have been the victims of discriminatory exclusion from the schools whose tax exemptions they challenge as unlawful. Indeed, they have not alleged at any stage of this litigation that their children have ever applied or would ever apply to any private school. See Wright v. Regan, 211 U.S.App.D.C. 231, 238, 656 F.2d 820, 827 (1981) ("Plaintiffs . . . maintain they have no interest whatever in enrolling their children in a private school") . ”

“ A policy of a school that favors racial minority groups with respect to admissions, facilities and programs, and financial assistance will not constitute discrimination on the basis of race when the purpose and effect is to promote the establishment and maintenance of that school's racially nondiscriminatory policy as to students. ”

“ Parents of black public school children allege in this nationwide class action that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has not adopted sufficient standards and procedures to fulfill its obligation to deny tax-exempt status to racially discriminatory private schools. They assert that the IRS thereby harms them directly and interferes with the ability of their [p740] children to receive an education in desegregated public schools. The issue before us is whether plaintiffs have standing to bring this suit. We hold that they do not. ”

“ Respondents here have no standing to complain simply that their Government is violating the law.
Neither do they have standing to litigate their claims based on the stigmatizing injury often caused by racial discrimination. There can be no doubt that this sort of noneconomic injury is one of the most serious consequences of discriminatory government action, and is sufficient in some circumstances to support standing. ”

“ In this litigation, respondents identify only one interest that they allege is being discriminatorily impaired — their interest in desegregated public school education. Respondents' asserted stigmatic injury, therefore, is sufficient to support their standing in this litigation only if their school desegregation injury independently meets the causation requirement of standing doctrine. ”

“ Determining standing in a particular case may be facilitated by clarifying principles or even clear rules developed in prior cases. Typically, however, the standing inquiry requires careful judicial examination of a complaint's allegations to ascertain whether the particular plaintiff is entitled to an adjudication of the particular claims asserted. Is the injury too abstract, or otherwise not appropriate, to be considered judicially cognizable? Is the line of causation between the illegal conduct and injury too attenuated? ”

“ Littleton, 414 U.S. 488 (1974) , the Court held that the plaintiffs had no standing to challenge racial discrimination in the administration of their city's criminal justice system, because they had not alleged that they had been, or would likely be, subject to the challenged practices. The Court denied standing on similar facts in Rizzo v. Goode, 423 U.S. 362 (1976) . In each of those cases, the plaintiffs alleged official racial discrimination comparable to that alleged by respondents here. ”

“ When a plaintiff seeks to enjoin the activity of a government agency, even within a unitary court system, his case must contend with "the well-established rule that the Government has traditionally been granted the widest latitude in the ‘dispatch of its own internal affairs,' Cafeteria Workers v. ”

“ We assume, arguendo, that the asserted stigmatic injury may be caused by the Government's grant of tax exemptions to racially discriminatory schools even if the Government is granting those exemptions without knowing or believing that the schools in fact discriminate. That is, we assume, without deciding, that the challenged Government tax exemptions are the equivalent of Government discrimination. ”

“ The school must make its nondiscrimination policy known to the entire community served by the school, and must publicly disavow any contrary representations made on its behalf once it becomes aware of them. ”

“ Standing doctrine embraces several judicially self-imposed limits on the exercise of federal jurisdiction, such as 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. ”

“ We disagree with JUSTICE STEVENS' suggestions that separation of powers principles merely underlie standing requirements, have no role to play in giving meaning to those requirements, and should be considered only under a distinct justiciability analysis. ”

“ It is this fact which makes possible the gradual clarification of the law through judicial application. Of course, both federal and state courts have long experience in applying and elaborating in numerous contexts the pervasive and fundamental notion of separation of powers. ”

“ Second, a school that draws its students from areas larger than the local community satisfies the requirement if it enrolls minority students in meaningful numbers or engages in promotional and recruitment activities reasonably designed to reach all racial segments of the areas from which students are drawn. ”

“ It is in their complaint's second claim of injury that respondents allege harm to a concrete, personal interest that can support standing in some circumstances. The injury they identify — their children's diminished ability to receive an education in a racially integrated school — is, beyond any doubt, not only judicially cognizable but, as shown by cases from Brown v. ”

“ Instead, the court observed,
[t] he sole injury [respondents] claim is the denigration they suffer as black parents and schoolchildren when their government graces with tax-exempt status educational institutions in their communities that treat members of their race as persons of lesser worth. Id. at 238, 656 F.2d at 827. The court held this denigration injury enough to give respondents standing, since it was this injury which supported standing in Coit v. ”