United States Supreme Court

Plaintiffs do not have Article III standing to challenge 50 U.S.C. section 1881a of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to acquire foreign intelligence information by jointly authorizing the surveillance of individuals who are not United States persons and are reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S., where: 1) the standard for determining standing is that the threatened injury must be "certainly impending" to constitute injury in fact; 2) plaintiffs are U.S. persons whose work allegedly requires them to engage in sensitive international communications with individuals who they believe are likely targets of surveillance; 3) plaintiffs' standing theory rests on a speculative chain of possibilities that does not establish that their potential injury is certainly impending or is fairly traceable to section 1881a; and 4) plaintiffs cannot manufacture standing by choosing to make expenditures based on hypothetical future harm that is not certainly impending.

Appellate Information

• Decided 02/26/2013
• Published 02/26/2013

Judges

• ALITO

Court

• United States Supreme Court

Counsel