# Challenging a law (in the US)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/challenging-a-law-in-the-us/548603>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 30, 2010, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/challenging-a-law-in-the-us/548603 "2010-07-30T17:48:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\
**Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/challenging-a-law-in-the-us/548603/21 "2010-07-31T21:03:10Z")

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I think the explanation given here is a bit muddy, so I’ll offer a clarification. As the wiki article linked by **Todderbob** states:

> [@](#):
>
> There are three standing requirements:
> 
> 1. Injury: The plaintiff must have suffered or imminently will suffer injury—an invasion of a legally protected interest that is concrete and particularized. The injury must be actual or imminent, distinct and palpable, not abstract. This injury could be economic as well as non-economic.
> 2. Causation: There must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of, so that the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant and not the result of the independent action of some third party who is not before the court.
> 3. Redressability: It must be likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that a favorable court decision will redress the injury. (underlining added)

I don’t want to get into a huge standing discussion here, since it can be a fairly complex area of law. But I agree with Wiki here in that you don’t necessarily need to have suffered an actual injury to have standing. An “imminent” injury (which is necessarily one that hasn’t happened yet), can be enough to establish standing in many cases.

Here’s a [Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Immigration_Law) link which discusses the various cases filed here. There have been a number of suits filed by individuals and organizations challenging the law. On a brief glance, nothing jumped out at me as preventing standing for these suits, but it’s for the court to decide.

This [link](http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/az-complaint.pdf) appears to the the filing by the justice department in the case (warning PDF). Again, I only briefly glanced at it, but it looks like the Feds made the argument that they are suffering current injury (in addition to imminent injury). For example, one of the claims made was that the passage itself has already harmed US foreign relations. I didn’t go look up how the judge ruled on the claim. But there are a few of these types of passages in the pleading.

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**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\
**Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/challenging-a-law-in-the-us/548603/22 "2010-07-31T21:37:48Z")

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> [@BrightNShiny](#):
>
> I think the explanation given here is a bit muddy, so I’ll offer a clarification. As the wiki article linked by **Todderbob** states:
> 
> > [@](#):
> >
> > There are three standing requirements:
> > 
> > 1. Injury: The plaintiff must have suffered or imminently will suffer injury—an invasion of a legally protected interest that is concrete and particularized. The injury must be actual or imminent, distinct and palpable, not abstract. This injury could be economic as well as non-economic.
> > 2. Causation: There must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of, so that the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant and not the result of the independent action of some third party who is not before the court.
> > 3. Redressability: It must be likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that a favorable court decision will redress the injury. (underlining added)
> 
> I don’t want to get into a huge standing discussion here, since it can be a fairly complex area of law. But I agree with Wiki here in that you don’t necessarily need to have suffered an actual injury to have standing. An “imminent” injury (which is necessarily one that hasn’t happened yet), can be enough to establish standing in many cases.
> 
> Here’s a [Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Immigration_Law) link which discusses the various cases filed here. There have been a number of suits filed by individuals and organizations challenging the law. On a brief glance, nothing jumped out at me as preventing standing for these suits, but it’s for the court to decide.
> 
> This [link](http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/az-complaint.pdf) appears to the the filing by the justice department in the case (warning PDF). Again, I only briefly glanced at it, but it looks like the Feds made the argument that they are suffering current injury (in addition to imminent injury). For example, one of the claims made was that the passage itself has already harmed US foreign relations. I didn’t go look up how the judge ruled on the claim. But there are a few of these types of passages in the pleading.

OK, that helped me understand things a lot better. Thank you.

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