OPINION OF THE COURT
DAIMLERCHRYSLER CORP. V. CUNO
547 U. S. ____ (2006)
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
NOS. 04-1704 AND 04-1724
DAIMLERCHRYSLER CORPORATION, et al.,
PETITIONERS
04–1704
v.
CHARLOTTE CUNO et al.
WILLIAM W. WILKINS, TAX COMMISSIONER FOR THE
STATE OF OHIO, et al., PETITIONERS
04–1724
v.
CHARLOTTE CUNO et al.
on writs of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the sixth circuit
[May 15, 2006]
Chief Justice Roberts
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Jeeps were first mass-produced in
1941 for the U. S. Army by the Willys-Overland Motor Company in
Toledo, Ohio. Nearly 60 years later, the city of Toledo and State
of Ohio sought to encourage the current manufacturer of
Jeeps—DaimlerChrysler—to expand its Jeep operation in Toledo, by
offering local and state tax benefits for new investment. Taxpayers
in Toledo sued, alleging that their local and state tax burdens
were increased by the tax breaks for DaimlerChrysler, tax breaks
that they asserted violated the Commerce Clause. The Court of
Appeals agreed that a state tax credit offered under Ohio law
violated the Commerce Clause, and state and local officials and
DaimlerChrysler sought review in this Court. We are obligated
before reaching this Commerce Clause question to determine whether
the taxpayers who objected to the credit have standing to press
their complaint in federal court. We conclude that they do not, and
we therefore can proceed no further.
I
Ohio levies a franchise tax “upon
corporations for the privilege of doing business in the state,
owning or using a part or all of its capital or property in [the]
state, or holding a certificate of compliance authorizing it to do
business in [the] state.”
Wesnovtek Corp. v.
Wilkins, 105 Ohio St. 3d 312, 313, 2005–Ohio–1826, ¶2, 825
N. E. 2d 1099, 1100; see Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §5733.01 (Lexis
2005). A taxpayer that purchases “new manufacturing machinery and
equipment” and installs it at sites in the State receives a credit
against the franchise tax. See §5733.33(B)(1) (Lexis
1999).[
Footnote 1]
Municipalities in Ohio may also offer partial property tax waivers
to businesses that agree to invest in qualifying areas. See
§5709.62(C)(1)(a) (Lexis 2005). With consent from local school
districts, the partial property tax waiver can be increased to a
complete exemption. See §5709.62(D)(1).
In 1998, DaimlerChrysler entered
into a contract with the city of Toledo. Under the contract,
DaimlerChrysler agreed to expand its Jeep assembly plant at
Stickney Avenue in Toledo. In exchange, the city agreed to waive
the property tax for the plant, with the consent of the two school
districts in which the plant is located. Because DaimlerChrysler
undertook to purchase and install “new manufacturing machinery and
equipment,” it was also entitled to a credit against the state
franchise tax. See §5733.33(B)(1) (Lexis 1999).
Plaintiffs filed suit against various state
and local officials and DaimlerChrysler in state court, alleging
that these tax benefits violated the Commerce Clause. Most of the
plaintiffs were residents of Toledo, who paid taxes to both the
city of Toledo and State of Ohio. They claimed that they were
injured because the tax breaks for DaimlerChrysler diminished the
funds available to the city and State, imposing a “disproportionate
burden” on plaintiffs. App. 18a, 23a, 28a.[
Footnote 2]
Defendants removed the action to the United
States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. See 28 U.
S. C. §1441. Plaintiffs filed motions to remand the case to
state court. See §1447(c). One of the grounds on which they sought
remand concerned their standing. They professed “substantial doubts
about their ability to satisfy either the constitutional or the
prudential limitations on standing in the federal court,” and urged
the District Court to avoid the issue entirely by remanding.
Plaintiffs’ Supplemental Motion for Remand to State Court in No.
3:00cv7247, p. 13, Record Doc. 17 (footnote omitted).
The District Court declined to remand the
case, concluding that, “[a]t the bare minimum, the Plaintiffs who
are taxpayers have standing to object to the property tax exemption
and franchise tax credit statutes under the ‘municipal taxpayer
standing’ rule articulated in
Massachusetts v.
Mellon, 262 U. S. 447 (1923).” App. 78a
(citations omitted). On the merits, the District Court found that
neither tax benefit violated the Commerce Clause. See 154
F. Supp. 2d 1196 (2001). The Court of Appeals for the Sixth
Circuit agreed with the District Court as to the municipal property
tax exemption, but held that the state franchise tax credit
violated the Commerce Clause. See 386 F. 3d 738 (2004). The
Court of Appeals did not address the issue of standing.
Defendants sought certiorari to review the
Sixth Circuit’s invalidation of the franchise tax credit and
plaintiffs sought certiorari to review the upholding of the
property tax exemption. We granted certiorari to consider whether
the franchise tax credit violates the Commerce Clause, 545 U. S.
___ (2005); the Michigan Supreme Court had decided a similar
question contrary to the Sixth Circuit’s analysis here. See
Caterpillar, Inc. v.
Dept. of Treasury, 440 Mich.
400, 488 N. W. 2d 182 (1992). We also asked the parties to
address whether plaintiffs have standing to challenge the franchise
tax credit in this litigation.
II
We have “an obligation to assure
ourselves” of litigants’ standing under Article III.
Friends of
Earth, Inc. v.
Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC),
Inc., 528 U. S.
167, 180 (2000). We therefore begin by addressing plaintiffs’
claims that they have standing as taxpayers to challenge the
franchise tax credit.
A
Chief Justice Marshall, in
Marbury v.
Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803), grounded
the Federal Judiciary’s authority to exercise judicial review and
interpret the Constitution on the necessity to do so in the course
of carrying out the judicial function of deciding cases. As
Marshall explained, “[t]hose who apply the rule to particular
cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule.”
Id., at 177. Determining that a matter before the federal
courts is a proper case or controversy under Article III therefore
assumes particular importance in ensuring that the Federal
Judiciary respects “ ‘the proper—and properly limited—role of
the courts in a democratic society,’ ”
Allen v.
Wright, 468
U. S. 737, 750 (1984) (quoting
Warth v.
Seldin, 422
U. S. 490, 498 (1975)). If a dispute is not a proper case or
controversy, the courts have no business deciding it, or expounding
the law in the course of doing so.
This Court has recognized that
the case-or-controversy limitation is crucial in maintaining the
“ ‘tripartite allocation of power’ ” set forth in the
Constitution.
Valley Forge Christian College v.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc.,
454 U. S. 464,
474 (1982) (quoting
Flast v.
Cohen, 392 U. S. 83, 95 (1968)). Marshall
again made the point early on, this time in a speech in the House
of Representatives. “A case in law or equity,” Marshall
remarked,
“was a term … of limited signification. It was a
controversy between parties which had taken a shape for judicial
decision. If the judicial power extended to every
question
under the constitution it would involve almost every subject proper
for legislative discussion and decision; if to every
question under the laws and treaties of the United States
it would involve almost every subject on which the executive could
act. The division of power [among the branches of government] could
exist no longer, and the other departments would be swallowed up by
the judiciary.” 4 Papers of John Marshall 95 (C. Cullen ed.
1984).
As this Court has explained, “ ‘[n]o principle
is more fundamental to the judiciary’s proper role in our system of
government than the constitutional limitation of federal-court
jurisdiction to actual cases or controversies.’ ”
Raines v.
Byrd, 521 U. S. 811, 818
(1997) (quoting
Simon v.
Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights
Organization, 426 U. S. 26, 37
(1976)).
The case-or-controversy requirement thus plays
a critical role, and “Article III standing … enforces the
Constitution’s case-or-controversy requirement.”
Elk Grove
Unified School Dist. v.
Newdow, 542 U. S. 1, 11 (2004).
The “core component” of the requirement that a litigant have
standing to invoke the authority of a federal court “is an
essential and unchanging part of the case-or-controversy
requirement of Article III.”
Lujan v.
Defenders of
Wildlife, 504
U. S. 555, 560 (1992). The requisite elements of this “core
component derived directly from the Constitution” are familiar: “A
plaintiff must allege personal injury fairly traceable to the
defendant’s allegedly unlawful conduct and likely to be redressed
by the requested relief.”
Allen,
supra, at 751.
We have been asked to decide an important question of
constitutional law concerning the Commerce Clause. But before we do
so, we must find that the question is presented in a “case” or
“controversy” that is, in James Madison’s words, “of a Judiciary
Nature.” 2 Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, p. 430 (M.
Farrand ed. 1966). That requires plaintiffs, as the parties now
asserting federal jurisdiction, to carry the burden of establishing
their standing under Article III.[
Footnote 3]
B
Plaintiffs principally claim
standing by virtue of their status as Ohio taxpayers, alleging that
the franchise tax credit “depletes the funds of the State of Ohio
to which the Plaintiffs contribute through their tax payments” and
thus “diminish[es] the total funds available for lawful uses and
impos[es] disproportionate burdens on” them. App. 28a; see also
Brief for Respondents 24. On several occasions, this Court has
denied
federal taxpayers standing under Article III to
object to a particular expenditure of federal funds simply because
they are taxpayers. Thus the alleged “deprivation of the fair and
constitutional use of [a federal taxpayer’s] tax dollar” cannot
support a challenge to the conveyance of Government land to a
private religious college,
Valley Forge, supra, at 476–482
(internal quotation marks and some brackets omitted), and “the
interest of a taxpayer in the moneys of the federal treasury
furnishes no basis” to argue that a federal agency’s loan practices
are unconstitutional,
Alabama Power Co. v.
Ickes,
302 U. S. 464,
478 (1938); see also
Schlesinger v.
Reservists Comm.
to Stop the War, 418 U. S. 208 (1974);
United States v.
Richardson, 418 U. S. 166
(1974).
The animating principle behind
these cases was announced in their progenitor,
Frothingham
v.
Mellon, decided with
Massachusetts v.
Mellon,
262 U. S. 447 (1923). In rejecting a
claim that improper federal appropriations would “increase the
burden of future taxation and thereby take [the plaintiff’s]
property without due process of law,” the Court observed that a
federal taxpayer’s
“interest in the moneys of the Treasury … is shared
with millions of others; is comparatively minute and
indeterminable; and the effect upon future taxation, of any payment
out of the funds, so remote, fluctuating and uncertain, that no
basis is afforded for an appeal to the preventive powers of a court
of equity.”
Id., at 486–487.
This logic is equally applicable to taxpayer
challenges to expenditures that deplete the treasury, and to
taxpayer challenges to so-called “tax expenditures,” which reduce
amounts available to the treasury by granting tax credits or
exemptions. In either case, the alleged injury is based on the
asserted effect of the allegedly illegal activity on public
revenues, to which the taxpayer contributes.
Standing has been rejected in such cases
because the alleged injury is not “concrete and particularized,”
Defenders of Wildlife,
supra, at 560, but instead
a grievance the taxpayer “suffers in some indefinite way in common
with people generally,”
Frothingham,
supra, at
488. In addition, the injury is not “actual or imminent,” but
instead “conjectural or hypothetical.”
Defenders of
Wildlife,
supra, at 560 (internal quotation marks and
citations omitted). As an initial matter, it is unclear that tax
breaks of the sort at issue here do in fact deplete the treasury:
The very point of the tax benefits is to spur economic activity,
which in turn
increases government revenues. In this very
action, the Michigan plaintiffs claimed that they were injured
because they lost out on the added revenues that would have
accompanied DaimlerChrysler’s decision to expand facilities in
Michigan. See n. 2,
supra.
Plaintiffs’ alleged injury is also
“conjectural or hypothetical” in that it depends on how legislators
respond to a reduction in revenue, if that is the consequence of
the credit. Establishing injury requires speculating that elected
officials will increase a taxpayer-plaintiff’s tax bill to make up
a deficit; establishing redressability requires speculating that
abolishing the challenged credit will redound to the benefit of the
taxpayer because legislators will pass along the supposed increased
revenue in the form of tax reductions. Neither sort of speculation
suffices to support standing. See
ASARCO Inc. v.
Kadish, 490 U. S. 605, 614 (1989) (opinion of
Kennedy, J.) (“[I]t is pure speculation whether the lawsuit would
result in any actual tax relief for respondents”);
Warth,
422 U. S., at 509 (criticizing a taxpayer standing claim for the
“conjectural nature of the asserted injury”).
A taxpayer-plaintiff has no right to insist
that the government dispose of any increased revenue it might
experience as a result of his suit by decreasing his tax liability
or bolstering programs that benefit him. To the contrary, the
decision of how to allocate any such savings is the very epitome of
a policy judgment committed to the “broad and legitimate
discretion” of lawmakers, which “the courts cannot presume either
to control or to predict.”
ASARCO,
supra, at 615
(opinion of Kennedy, J.). Under such circumstances, we have no
assurance that the asserted injury is “imminent”—that it is
“certainly impending.”
Whitmore v.
Arkansas,
495 U. S. 149,
158 (1990) (internal quotation marks omitted); see
Defenders of
Wildlife, 504 U. S.
, at 564–565, n. 2.
The foregoing rationale for rejecting federal
taxpayer standing applies with undiminished force to state
taxpayers. We indicated as much in
Doremus v.
Board of
Ed. of Hawthorne, 342 U. S. 429 (1952). In
that case, we noted our earlier holdings that “the interests of a
taxpayer in the moneys of the federal treasury are too
indeterminable, remote, uncertain and indirect” to support standing
to challenge “their manner of expenditure.”
Id., at 433.
We then “reiterate[d]” what we had said in rejecting a federal
taxpayer challenge to a federal statute “as equally true when a
state Act is assailed: ‘The [taxpayer] must be able to show … that
he has sustained … some direct injury … and not merely that he
suffers in some indefinite way in common with people
generally.’ ”
Id., at 433–434 (quoting
Frothingham,
supra, at 488); see
ASARCO,
supra, at 613–614 (opinion of Kennedy, J.) (“[W]e have
likened state taxpayers to federal taxpayers” for purposes of
taxpayer standing (citing
Doremus,
supra, at
434)).
The allegations of injury that plaintiffs make
in their complaint furnish no better basis for finding standing
than those made in the cases where federal taxpayer standing was
denied. Plaintiffs claim that DaimlerChrysler’s tax credit depletes
the Ohio fisc and “impos[es] disproportionate burdens on [them].”
App. 28a. This is no different from similar claims by federal
taxpayers we have already rejected under Article III as
insufficient to establish standing. See,
e.g.,
Frothingham, 262 U. S.
, at 486 (allegation of
injury that the effect of government spending “will be to increase
the burden of future taxation and thereby take [plaintiff’s]
property without due process of law”).
State policymakers, no less than their federal
counterparts, retain broad discretion to make “policy decisions”
concerning state spending “in different ways … depending on their
perceptions of wise state fiscal policy and myriad other
circumstances.”
ASARCO,
supra, at 615 (opinion of
Kennedy, J.). Federal courts may not assume a particular exercise
of this state fiscal discretion in establishing standing; a party
seeking federal jurisdiction cannot rely on such “[s]peculative
inferences … to connect [his] injury to the challenged actions of
[the defendant],”
Simon, 426 U. S., at 45; see also
Allen, 468 U. S.
, at 759. Indeed, because state
budgets frequently contain an array of tax and spending provisions,
any number of which may be challenged on a variety of bases,
affording state taxpayers standing to press such challenges simply
because their tax burden gives them an interest in the state
treasury would interpose the federal courts as “ ‘virtually
continuing monitors of the wisdom and soundness’ ” of state
fiscal administration, contrary to the more modest role Article III
envisions for federal courts. See
id., at 760–761 (quoting
Laird v.
Tatum, 408 U. S. 1, 15
(1972)).
For the foregoing reasons, we hold that state
taxpayers have no standing under Article III to challenge state tax
or spending decisions simply by virtue of their status as
taxpayers.[
Footnote 4]
C
Plaintiffs argue that an
exception to the general prohibition on taxpayer standing should
exist for Commerce Clause challenges to state tax or spending
decisions, analogizing their Commerce Clause claim to the
Establishment Clause challenge we permitted in
Flast v.
Cohen, 392 U. S. 83.
Flast held that
because “the Establishment Clause … specifically limit[s] the
taxing and spending power conferred by Art. I, §8,” “a
taxpayer will have standing consistent with Article III to invoke
federal judicial power when he alleges that congressional action
under the taxing and spending clause is in derogation of” the
Establishment Clause.
Id., at 105–106.
Flast held
out the possibility that “other specific [constitutional]
limitations” on Art. I, §8, might surmount the “barrier to
suits against Acts of Congress brought by individuals who can
assert only the interest of federal taxpayers.” 392 U. S., at 105,
85. But as plaintiffs candidly concede, “only the Establishment
Clause” has supported federal taxpayer suits since
Flast.
Brief for Respondents 12; see
Bowen v.
Kendrick,
487 U. S. 589,
618 (1988) (“Although we have considered the problem of standing
and Article III limitations on federal jurisdiction many times
since
[Flast], we have consistently adhered to
Flast and the narrow exception it created to the general
rule against taxpayer standing”).
Quite apart from whether the
franchise tax credit is analogous to an exercise of congressional
power under Art. I, §8, plaintiffs’ reliance on
Flast is
misguided: Whatever rights plaintiffs have under the Commerce
Clause, they are fundamentally unlike the right not to
“ ‘contribute three pence … for the support of any one
[religious] establishment.’ ” 392 U. S.
, at 103
(quoting 2 Writings of James Madison 186 (G. Hunt ed. 1901)).
Indeed, plaintiffs compare the Establishment Clause to the Commerce
Clause at such a high level of generality that almost any
constitutional constraint on government power would “specifically
limit” a State’s taxing and spending power for
Flast
purposes. 392 U. S.
, at 105; see Brief for Respondents 14
(“In each case, the harm to be avoided by [the two clauses] is the
loss of governmental neutrality”). And even if the two clauses are
similar in that they often implicate governments’ fiscal decisions,
see
id., at 13–14, a finding that the Commerce Clause
satisfies the
Flast test would leave no principled way of
distinguishing those other constitutional provisions that we have
recognized constrain governments’ taxing and spending decisions.
See,
e.g., Arkansas Writers’ Project, Inc. v.
Ragland, 481 U. S. 221 (1987)
(invalidating state sales tax under the Free Press Clause). Yet
such a broad application of
Flast’s exception to the
general prohibition on taxpayer standing would be quite at odds
with its narrow application in our precedent and
Flast’s
own promise that it would not transform federal courts into forums
for taxpayers’ “generalized grievances.” 392 U. S.
, at
106.
Flast is consistent with the
principle, underlying the Article III prohibition on taxpayer
suits, that a litigant may not assume a particular disposition of
government funds in establishing standing. The
Flast Court
discerned in the history of the Establishment Clause “the specific
evils feared by [its drafters] that the taxing and spending power
would be used to favor one religion over another or to support
religion in general.”
Id., at 103
. The Court
therefore understood the “injury” alleged in Establishment Clause
challenges to federal spending to be the very “extract[ion] and
spen[ding]” of “tax money” in aid of religion alleged by a
plaintiff.
Id., at 106. And an injunction against the
spending would of course redress
that injury, regardless
of whether lawmakers would dispose of the savings in a way that
would benefit the taxpayer-plaintiffs personally. See
Valley
Forge, 454 U. S.
, at 514 (Stevens, J., dissenting)
(“[T]he plaintiffs’ invocation of the Establishment Clause was of
decisive importance in resolving the standing issue in
[Flast]”).
Plaintiffs thus do not have state taxpayer
standing on the ground that their Commerce Clause challenge is just
like the Establishment Clause challenge in
Flast.
III
Plaintiffs also claim that their
status as
municipal taxpayers gives them standing to
challenge the
state franchise tax credit at issue here.
The
Frothingham Court noted with approval the standing of
municipal residents to enjoin the “illegal use of the moneys of a
municipal corporation,” relying on “the peculiar relation of the
corporate taxpayer to the corporation” to distinguish such a case
from the general bar on taxpayer suits. 262 U. S.
, at
486–487; see
ASARCO, 490 U. S.
, at 613–614
(opinion of Kennedy, J.) (reiterating distinction). Plaintiffs here
challenged the municipal property tax exemption as municipal
taxpayers. That challenge was rejected by the Court of Appeals on
the merits, and no issue regarding plaintiffs’ standing to bring it
has been raised. In plaintiffs’ challenge to the state franchise
tax credit, however, they identify no municipal action contributing
to any claimed injury. Instead, they try to leverage the notion of
municipal taxpayer standing beyond challenges to municipal action,
in two ways.
A
First, plaintiffs claim that
because state law requires revenues from the franchise tax to be
distributed to local governments, Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §5733.12
(Lexis 2005), the award of a credit to DaimlerChrysler reduced such
distributions and thus depleted the funds of “local governments to
which Respondents pay taxes.” Brief for Respondents 16. But
plaintiffs’ challenge is still to the state law and state decision,
not those of their municipality. We have already explained why a
state taxpayer lacks standing to challenge a state fiscal decision
on the grounds that it might affect his tax liability. All
plaintiffs have done in recasting their claims as ones brought by
municipal taxpayers whose municipalities receive funding from the
State—the level of which might be affected by the same state fiscal
decision—is introduce yet another level of conjecture to their
already hypothetical claim of injury.
And in fact events have
highlighted the peril of assuming that any revenue increase
resulting from a taxpayer suit will be put to a particular use.
Ohio’s General Assembly suspended the statutory budget mechanism
that distributes franchise tax revenues to local governments in
2001 and again in its subsequent biennial budgets. See Amended
Substitute H. B. 94, 124th General Assembly §140 (2001),
available at http://www.legislature.state.
oh.us/BillText124/124_HB_94_ENR.pdf (all Internet ma- terials as
visited May 12, 2006, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file);
Amended Substitute H. B. 95, 125th General Assembly §139
(2003), available at
http:// www.legislature.state.oh.us/BillText125/125_HB_95_EN2_N.pdf;
Amended Substitute H. B. 66, 126th Gen- eral Assembly §557.12
(2005), available at http://www.
legislature.state.oh.us/BillText126/126_HB_66_EN2d.pdf. Any effect
that enjoining DaimlerChrysler’s credit will have on municipal
funds, therefore, will not result from automatic operation of a
statutory formula, but from a hypothesis that the state government
will choose to direct the supposed revenue from the restored
franchise tax to municipalities. This is precisely the sort of
conjecture we may not entertain in assessing standing. See
ASARCO,
supra, at 614 (opinion of Kennedy,
J.).
B
The second way plaintiffs seek to
leverage their standing to challenge the municipal property tax
exemption into a challenge to the franchise tax credit is by
relying on
Mine Workers v.
Gibbs, 383 U. S. 715 (1966).
According to plaintiffs, the “supplemental jurisdiction” recognized
in that case supports jurisdiction over all their claims, once the
District Court determined they had standing to challenge the
property tax exemption. Brief for Respondents 17–18.
Gibbs held that
federal-question jurisdiction over a claim may authorize a federal
court to exercise jurisdiction over state-law claims that may be
viewed as part of the same case because they “derive from a common
nucleus of operative fact” as the federal claim. 383 U. S., at 725.
Plaintiffs assume that
Gibbs stands for the proposition
that federal jurisdiction extends to all claims sufficiently
related to a claim within Article III to be part of the same case,
regardless of the nature of the deficiency that would keep the
former claims out of federal court if presented on their own.
Our general approach to the application of
Gibbs, however, has been markedly more cautious. For
example, as a matter of statutory construction of the pertinent
jurisidictional provisions, we refused to extend
Gibbs to
allow claims to be asserted against nondiverse parties when
jurisdiction was based on diversity, see
Owen Equipment &
Erection Co. v.
Kroger, 437 U. S. 365 (1978),
and we refused to extend
Gibbs to authorize supplemental
jurisdiction over claims that do not satisfy statutory
amount-in-controversy requirements, see
Finley v.
United States, 490 U. S. 545 (1989). As
the Court explained just last Term, “[w]e have not … applied
Gibbs’ expansive interpretive approach to other aspects of
the jurisdictional statutes.”
Exxon Mobil Corp. v.
Allapattah Services, Inc., 545 U. S. ___, ___ (2005) (slip
op., at 5) (applying 28 U. S. C. §1367, enacted in 1990, to
allow a federal court in a diversity action to exercise
supplemental jurisdiction over additional diverse plaintiffs whose
claims failed to meet the amount-in-controversy threshold).
What we have never done is apply the rationale
of
Gibbs to permit a federal court to exercise
supplemental jurisdiction over a claim that does not itself satisfy
those elements of the Article III inquiry, such as constitutional
standing, that “serv[e] to identify those disputes which are
appropriately resolved through the judicial process.”
Whitmore, 495 U. S., at 155. We see no reason to read the
language of
Gibbs so broadly, particularly since our
standing cases confirm that a plaintiff must demonstrate standing
for each claim he seeks to press. See
Allen, 468 U. S., at
752 (“[T]he 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” (emphasis added)). We have insisted, for
instance, that “a plaintiff must demonstrate standing separately
for each form of relief sought.”
Laidlaw, 528 U. S., at
185; see
Los Angeles v.
Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 109 (1983).
But if standing were commutative, as plaintiffs claim, this
insistence would make little sense when all claims for relief
derive from a “common nucleus of operative fact,” as they certainly
appear to have in both
Laidlaw,
supra, at
175–179, and
Lyons,
supra, at 97–98.
Plaintiffs’ reading of
Gibbs to allow
standing as to one claim to suffice for all claims arising from the
same “nucleus of operative fact” would have remarkable
implications. The doctrines of mootness, ripeness, and political
question all originate in Article III’s “case” or “controversy”
language, no less than standing does. See,
e.g.,
National Park Hospitality Assn. v.
Department of
Interior, 538
U. S. 803, 808 (2003) (ripeness);
Arizonans for Official
English v.
Arizona, 520 U. S. 43, 67 (1997)
(mootness);
Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U. S.,
at 215 (political question). Yet if
Gibbs’ “common
nucleus” formulation announced a new definition of “case” or
“controversy” for all Article III purposes, a federal court would
be free to entertain moot or unripe claims, or claims presenting a
political question, if they “derived from” the same “operative
fact[s]” as another federal claim suffering from none of these
defects. Plaintiffs’ reading of
Gibbs, therefore, would
amount to a significant revision of our precedent interpreting
Article III. With federal courts thus deciding
issues they would not otherwise be authorized to decide, the
“ ‘tripartite allocation of power’ ” that Article III is
designed to maintain,
Valley Forge, 454 U. S., at 474,
would quickly erode; our emphasis on the standing requirement’s
role in maintaining this separation would be rendered hollow
rhetoric. As we have explained, “[t]he actual-injury requirement
would hardly serve the purpose … of preventing courts from
undertaking tasks assigned to the political branches[,] if once a
plaintiff demonstrated harm from one particular inadequacy in
government administration, the court were authorized to remedy
all inadequacies in that administration.”
Lewis
v.
Casey, 518 U. S. 343, 357
(1996).
Lewis emphasized that “[t]he remedy
must of course be limited to the inadequacy that produced the
injury in fact that the plaintiff has established.”
Ibid.
Plaintiffs’ theory of ancillary standing would contravene this
principle. Plaintiffs failed to establish Article III injury with
respect to their
state taxes, and even if they did do so
with respect to their
municipal taxes, that injury does
not entitle them to seek a remedy as to the state taxes. As the
Court summed up the point in
Lewis, “standing is not
dispensed in gross.”
Id., at 358, n. 6.[
Footnote 5]
* * *
All the theories plaintiffs have
offered to support their standing to challenge the franchise tax
credit are unavailing. Because plaintiffs have no standing to
challenge that credit, the lower courts erred by considering their
claims against it on the merits. The judgment of the Sixth Circuit
is therefore vacated in part, and the cases are remanded for
dismissal of plaintiffs’ challenge to the franchise tax credit.
It is so ordered.
Footnote 1
Ohio has begun phasing out the franchise tax
and has discontinued offering new credits against the tax like the
one DaimlerChrysler received. See §§5733.01(G), 5733.33(B)(1)
(Lexis 2005). Where relevant, therefore, the citations in this
opinion are to the statutes in effect at the time DaimlerChrysler
made its investment.
Footnote 2
Other plaintiffs were residents of Toledo who
claimed they were injured because they were displaced by the
DaimlerChrysler expansion and Michigan residents who claimed injury
because DaimlerChrysler would have expanded its operations in
Michigan but for the Ohio investment tax credit. Plaintiffs neither
identified these allegations as a basis for standing in their
merits brief before this Court nor referred to them at oral
argument. Any argument based on these allegations is therefore
abandoned. See,
e.g., United States v.
International
Business Machines Corp., 517 U. S. 843, 855, and
n. 3 (1996).
Footnote 3
Because defendants removed the case from
state court to District Court, plaintiffs were not initially the
parties that invoked federal jurisdiction. Indeed, plaintiffs
initially expressed doubts as to their standing. Nonetheless,
because “[w]e presume that federal courts lack jurisdiction unless
the contrary appears affirmatively from the record,”
Renne
v.
Geary, 501 U. S. 312, 316
(1991) (internal quotation marks omitted), the party asserting
federal jurisdiction when it is challenged has the burden of
establishing it. Whatever the parties’ previous positions on the
propriety of a federal forum, plaintiffs, as the parties seeking to
establish federal jurisdiction, must make the showings required for
standing.
Footnote 4
The majority of the Courts of Appeals to have
considered the issue have reached a similar conclusion. See,
e.g., Booth v.
Hvass, 302 F. 3d 849
(CA8 2002);
Board of Ed. of Mt. Sinai Union Free School
Dist. v.
New York State Teachers Retirement System,
60 F. 3d 106 (CA2 1995);
Colorado Taxpayers Union,
Inc. v.
Romer, 963 F. 2d 1394 (CA10 1992);
Taub v.
Kentucky, 842 F. 2d 912 (CA6 1988);
Korioth v.
Briscoe, 523 F. 2d 1271 (CA5
1974); but cf.
Arakaki v.
Lingle, 423 F. 3d
954, 967–969 (CA9 2005) (finding state taxpayer standing in light
of
Hoohuli v.
Ariyoshi, 741 F. 2d 1169 (CA9
1984), but noting that Justice Kennedy’s opinion in
ASARCO
Inc. v.
Kadish, 490 U. S. 605 (1989), would “carry
persuasive value” absent
Hoohuli).
Footnote 5
In defending the contrary position,
plaintiffs rely on three cases from the Courts of Appeals. But two
of those cases hold only that, once a litigant has standing to
request invalidation of a particular agency action, it may do so by
identifying all grounds on which the agency may have “ ‘failed
to comply with its statutory mandate.’ ”
Sierra Club
v.
Adams, 578 F. 2d 389, 392 (CADC 1978) (quoting
Sierra Club v.
Morton, 405 U. S. 727, 737
(1972)); see also
Iowa Independent Bankers v.
Board of
Governors of Fed. Reserve, 511 F. 2d 1288, 1293–1294
(CADC 1975). They do not establish that the litigant can, by virtue
of his standing to challenge one government action, challenge other
governmental actions that did not injure him. In the third case,
the Court of Appeals relied substantially on the fact that “all
courts possess an inherent power to prevent unprofessional conduct
by those attorneys who are practicing before them” in allowing the
Government to contest the division of a damages award it was
ordered to pay between a plaintiff and his attorney.
Jackson v.
United States, 881 F. 2d 707,
710–711 (CA9 1989). That situation is rather far afield from the
question before us.
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