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FDA v. ALLIANCE FOR HIPPOCRATIC MEDICINE
Opinion of the Court
Driehaus, 573 U. S. 149, 162–163 (2014).
By contrast, when (as here) a plaintiff challenges the
government’s “unlawful regulation (or lack of regulation) of
someone else,” “standing is not precluded, but it is ordinarily
substantially more difficult to establish.” Lujan, 504 U. S.,
at 562 (quotation marks omitted); see Summers, 555 U. S.,
at 493. That is often because unregulated parties may have
more difficulty establishing causation—that is, linking
their asserted injuries to the government’s regulation (or
lack of regulation) of someone else. See Clapper, 568 U. S.,
at 413-414; Lujan, 504 U. S., at 562; Duke Power Co. v.
Carolina Environmental Study Group, Inc., 438 U. S. 59, 74
(1978); Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Organization,
426 U. S. 26, 41-46 (1976); Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490,
504-508 (1975).
When the plaintiff is an unregulated party, causation
“ordinarily hinge[s] on the response of the regulated (or
regulable) third party to the government action or
inaction—and perhaps on the response of others as well.”
Lujan, 504 U. S., at 562. Yet the Court has said that
plaintiffs attempting to show causation generally cannot
“rely on speculation about the unfettered choices made by
independent actors not before the courts.” Clapper, 568
U. S., at 415, n. 5 (quotation marks omitted); see also
Bennett v. Spear, 520 U. S. 154, 168–169 (1997). Therefore,
to thread the causation needle in those circumstances, the
plaintiff must show that the “third parties will likely react
in predictable ways”” that in turn will likely injure the
plaintiffs. California, 593 U.S., at 675 (quoting
Department of Commerce v. New York, 588 U. S. 752, 768
(2019)).
As this Court has explained, the “line of causation
between the illegal conduct and injury”—the “links in the
chain of causation,” Allen, 468 U. S., at 752, 759-must not
be too speculative or too attenuated, Clapper, 568 U. S., at
410-411. The causation requirement precludes speculative
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