The East Virginia consumers are going to be out of luck because they cannot show an injury-in-fact. They may be indignant about the environmental harm the company is causing in East Dakota, but indignation is not concrete enough to support a claim. The fishermen in choice B, on the other hand, have suffered the classic injury from a standing perspective: a direct economic loss. Choice C is drawn from Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Environmental, a 2000 Supreme Court case, in which an environmental group successfully asserted organizational standing on behalf of its members. The members in question alleged that river pollution had caused them “recreational” and “aesthetic” harms. The Court found that those harms were cognizable injuries-in-fact and that Friends of the Earth had established the three criteria for organizational standing.

If an organization can satisfy the criteria in answer choices A, C, and D, it may sue as a third party to redress its members’ injuries. Answer choice B states an independent ground for third-party standing: if an injured party is unlikely to be able to assert her own rights, a third party can do it for her. A classic example is a doctor who challenges an assisted-suicide ban on behalf of a terminally ill patient who is too ill to participate in a lawsuit.