It has been one year since the US Supreme Court’s much-anticipated decision in Spokeo Inc. v. Robins. The Spokeo decision analyzed the standing requirement of Article III in the context of federal statutory claims — particularly addressing whether Congress may confer standing on a plaintiff who suffers no concrete harm and seeks only statutory damages.
In the decision, the Supreme Court clarified that “Article III standing requires a concrete injury even in the context of a statutory violation,” noting that a plaintiff cannot “allege a bare procedural violation, divorced from any concrete harm, and satisfy the injury in fact requirement of Article III.”[2] The decision has set off an enhanced wave of motion practice, with litigants arguing the meaning of the decision in hundreds of cases in federal courts across the country.