Frothingham v. Mellon

Frothingham v. Mellon
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued Argued May 3, 4, 1923 Decided June 4, 1923
Full case name	Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury, et al.; Frothingham v. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury, et al.
Citations	262 U.S. 447 (more) 43 S. Ct. 597; 67 L. Ed. 1078
Holding
Court membership
Chief Justice William H. Taft Associate Justices Joseph McKenna · Oliver W. Holmes, Jr. Willis Van Devanter · James C. McReynolds Louis Brandeis · George Sutherland Pierce Butler · Edward T. Sanford
Case opinions
Majority	Sutherland, joined by a unanimous Court

Frothingham v. Mellon and Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447 (1923), were two consolidated cases decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the court rejected the concept of taxpayer standing. The plaintiffs in the cases, Frothingham and Massachusetts, sought to prevent certain federal government expenditures which they considered to violate the Tenth Amendment. The court rejected the suits on the basis that neither plaintiff suffered particularized harm, writing:

We have no power per se to review and annul acts of Congress on the ground that they are unconstitutional. The question may be considered only when the justification for some direct injury suffered or threatened, presenting a justiciable issue, is made to rest upon such an act…. The party who invokes the power must be able to show not only that the statute is invalid but that he has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury as the result of its enforcement, and not merely that he suffers in some indefinite way in common with people generally.

This case is considered the beginning of the doctrine of standing. Prior to it the doctrine was that all persons had a right to pursue a private prosecution of a public right.^[1]

The Warren Court would later carve out an exception to this rule in Flast v. Cohen, but later cases have confirmed that Flast is an exceedingly limited exception to Frothingham's general rule (see Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State and Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation).

The doctrine on standing has recently been modified by the unanimous opinion in Bond v. United States^[2] in which it was held an individual has standing to challenge the constitutionality of a federal statute under the Tenth Amendment.

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 262

Notes

• Text of Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447 (1923) is available from: Justia · Findlaw

1. ^ The Metaphor of Standing and the Problem of Self-Governance, by Steven L. Winter, 40 Stan. L. Rev. 1371, July, 1988.
2. ^ Bond v. United States, No. 09-1227, June 16, 2011