Clapper v. Amnesty International USA

Supreme Court of the United States · 2013 · Constitutional Law

568 U.S. 398 (2013)

Updated July 29, 2026

Constitutional LawArticle III standingsurveillanceArticle IIIstandinginjury in factcertainly impendingfairly traceable

Facts

Section 702 of FISA, 50 U.S.C. §1881a, permits the Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence, with Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approval, to authorize surveillance targeting non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States in order to acquire foreign intelligence information. Respondents are U.S. persons, including attorneys and human rights, labor, legal, and media organizations, who alleged that their work requires sensitive international communications with people they believe are likely targets of §1881a surveillance. They claimed there was an objectively reasonable likelihood their communications would be acquired in the future and that, because of that risk, they had already taken costly and burdensome steps to protect confidentiality. They sought prospective relief declaring §1881a unconstitutional and enjoining §1881a-authorized surveillance.

Issue

Whether respondents had Article III standing to seek prospective declaratory and injunctive relief against §1881a-authorized surveillance. Specifically, the question was whether their alleged future interception injury was sufficiently imminent and fairly traceable to §1881a, or whether their present costs incurred to avoid surveillance independently created standing.

Rule

To establish Article III standing, a plaintiff must show an injury that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent, fairly traceable to the challenged action, and redressable by a favorable ruling. Threatened injury must be certainly impending; allegations of possible future injury are insufficient. A plaintiff also cannot manufacture standing by choosing to incur costs based on hypothetical future harm that is not certainly impending.

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One of 10 multiple-choice questions for this case. Pick an answer to see why.

Nina Farrow, a documentary producer in Seattle, sues in federal court to enjoin a federal surveillance statute that permits monitoring of noncitizens abroad with court approval. She says she regularly emails dissidents in Turkey and Sudan and believes some of them are the type of people the government may wish to monitor, but she has no evidence that any of them have been selected for surveillance.

Does Nina most likely have Article III standing for prospective relief?

Explanation. Article III requires a concrete, particularized injury that is actual or imminent, and threatened injury must be certainly impending. A plaintiff lacks standing where the feared interception rests on a speculative chain of possibilities, including whether the government will target foreign contacts at all and whether the plaintiff's own communications will be acquired. The majority rejected an 'objectively reasonable likelihood' standard as too weak. (Derived from Clapper v. Amnesty International USA (2013).)