Proximate Cause in Statutory Standing and the Genesis of Federal Common Law

The federal courts have long struggled to articulate a set of coherent standards for who may assert rights under a federal statute. Apart from the constitutional limitations of the judicial power under Article III, courts have until recently addressed this question under a series of freestanding “prudential” rules governing standing to sue. The Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Lexmark International v. Static Control Components marked a sea change, holding that the federal courts may not decline to assert jurisdiction for prudential reasons and that standing to sue under a federal statute depends on whom Congress intended to authorize to sue. But Lexmark raised as many questions as it answered. In the same breath that it declared statutory standing a matter of congressional intent, the Court held that proximate cause— a creature of the common law of tort—generally defines the limits of federal statutory claims. Subsequent decisions applying this rule have extrapolated the Court’s decisional law from narrow and specific settings to provide a new, trans-substantive limitation on standing to assert federal statutory rights.