[citation needed] Ordinarily, one may not claim standing in a court to vindicate the constitutional rights of some third party.
[5] The common thread underlying both requirements is that a person cannot challenge the constitutionality of a statute unless he shows that he himself is injured by its operation.
In Pierce v. Society of Sisters,[8] a state statute required all parents to send their children to public schools.
A private and a parochial school brought suit to enjoin enforcement of the act on the ground that it violated the constitutional rights of parents and guardians.
The Court nonetheless held that the statute was unconstitutional because it "unreasonably interferes with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.
The Court noted that because litigation by individual NAACP members would require disclosure of their identity and thus destroy the freedom of association threatened by the court order, the NAACP was a proper party to act on the members' behalf to assert their constitutional rights.
The Court held that the liquor vendor, subject to sanctions and loss of license for violation of the statute, was a proper party in interest to object to the enforcement of the allegedly discriminatory law, because obedience to the law would cause loss of sales and disobedience risked sanctions from the state.
"Accordingly," the Court explained, "vendors and those in like positions have been uniformly permitted to resist efforts at restricting their operations by acting as advocates of the rights of third parties who seek access to their market or function.
"[14] It is crucial to the vendor's standing that its failure to prevail in the litigation "will materially impair the ability of males 18-20 years of age to purchase 3.2% beer despite their classification by an overt gender-based criterion.
In Barrows, it was being required to pay damages for violating the racial covenant; in NAACP, contempt; in Griswold, criminal prosecution as an aider and abettor.
In Kowalski v. Tesmer,[16] the Court denied standing to Michigan attorneys who sued to challenge state law that restricted appointment of appellate counsel for indigent defendants who had pleaded guilty.
[17]The attorneys in this case invoked the potential attorney-client relationship to demonstrate the requisite closeness" Specifically, they rely on a future attorney-client relationship with as yet unascertained Michigan criminal defendants "who will request, but be denied, the appointment of appellate counsel, based on the operation" of the statute.
The attorneys argued that, without counsel, unsophisticated, pro se criminal defendants could not "coherently advance the substance of their constitutional claim."
They argued that only "prudential considerations" rather than constitutional ones prevented allowing the attorneys to assert the prisoners' rights.
[30] On the other hand, in Helferich Patent Licensing, LLC v. New York Times Co.,[31] the Federal Circuit denied standing to assert the exhaustion doctrine to a seller of services (Internet news stories) to purchasers of patented equipment (smartphones) on two principal grounds: First, the defendant seller was not itself a purchaser from the plaintiff patentee.