United States v. Students Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedures (SCRAP), 412 U.S. 669 (1973), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held that the members of SCRAP—five law students from the George Washington University Law School—had standing to sue under Article III of the Constitution to challenge a nationwide railroad freight rate increase approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC).

In the late 1960s, Ralph Nader, with the help of law and graduate students, sought to expose disquieting and sometimes corrupting relationships between industry and government regulatory agencies, whose duty was to act in the public interest.

Members of Congress, such as Senators Lee Metcalf (Montana) and Warren Magnuson (Washington), also had exposed the relationship and its harmful effects on American farmers, consumers, and shippers.

Within the George Washington Law School, Professor John F. Banzhaf, to the consternation of traditionalists in legal education, encouraged students to identify problematic corporate and regulatory agency relationships and to engage and challenge them in practical, real terms on their own turf.

The five law students (George Biondi, John Larouche, Kenneth Perlman, Neil Thomas Proto, and Peter Ressler) who formed Students Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedures (SCRAP) began their journey in December 1971 with the filing of a petition in the ICC that sought a $1 billion refund for the failure of the commission to comply with NEPA when approving a 20 percent rate increase (after NEPA's effective date) that SCRAP (and others) claimed discriminated against the movement of recyclable materials by favoring the movement of raw materials.

Because harm was imminent and an environmental impact statement was not yet prepared, the nation's railroads were enjoined from collecting the rate increase on recyclable materials.

In Part II (standing to sue), he concluded that the allegations in the complaint demonstrated that the individual members of SCRAP would be injured by the freight rate increase.

Although the complaint contained various allegations of harm, Justice Stewart relied almost exclusively on SCRAP's allegation that each of its members "'[u]ses the forest, rivers, streams, mountains, and other natural resources of the Washington Metropolitan area and at his legal residence, for camping, hiking, fishing, sightseeing, and other recreational [and] aesthetic purposes,' and that these uses have been adversely affected by the increased freight rates…."

He determined that although "attenuated," SCRAP's members had "alleged a specific and perceptible harm that distinguished them from other citizens who had not used the natural resources that were claimed to be affected."

Justice Harry Blackmun concluded that "in evaluating whether injunctive relief is warranted, I would not require that the appellees, in their individual capacities prove that they were injured.

Rather, I would require only that appellees, as responsible and sincere representatives of environmental interests, show that the environment would be injured in fact and that such injury would be irreparable and substantial."

Justice Thurgood Marshall concurred in Justice Stewart's opinion on standing to sue but also was "convinced there is no lack of judicial power to issue a preliminary injunction against the interim surcharge...." He believed that "[p]roperly viewed ... the injunction at issue in this case amounts to nothing more than a legitimate effort by the District Court, following the Commission’s refusal to suspend the surcharge, to maintain the status quo pending final determination of the legality of the Commission’s action at the suspension stage in light of the requirements of NEPA."

Consequently, "the grant of preliminary relief here involves no such interference with the Commission’s initial exercise of its particular expertise.... [And] where does the Interstate Commerce Act make provision for an accounting and 'refund' to the people of our Nation for the irreversible ecological damage that results from a rate increase which discriminates unreasonably against recyclable materials and has been allowed to take effect without compliance with the procedural requirements of NEPA?"

Citing Scripps-Howard Radio, Inc. v. FCC, 316 U.S. at 17, Justice Marshall opined that Congress "knew how to use apt words" if it wanted to deprive the District Court of its historic power to enjoin agency actions to preserve its jurisdiction.

Finally, he would have supported the District Court's reasoning that a preliminary injunction should issue to protect NEPA's purpose and thwart the ICC's "technical maneuvers" to avoid it.

Beginning in 1975, the Supreme Court of the United States significantly expanded the requirements necessary to meet Article III standing to sue.

With a series of decisions in the 1980s and an alteration in the Court's composition, the notion of separation of powers became the majority's guiding principle in determining standing to sue, often over contentious dissenting opinions.

The Court, through Justice John Paul Stevens, concluded that Massachusetts had standing to challenge EPA's failure to propose regulations to control greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles.