At an irreducible minimum, Art. III requires the party who invokes the court's authority to "show that the personally has suffered some actual or threatened injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant," Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood (1979), and that the injury "is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision," Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Org. (1976). … But the "cases and controversies" language of Art. III forecloses the conversion of courts of the United States into judicial versions of college debating forums…. The exercise of judicial power, which can so profoundly affect the lives, liberty, and property of those to whom it extends, is therefore restricted to litigants who can show "injury in fact" resulting from the action which they seek to have the Court adjudicate.The court claimed that this case was different from Flast because:
Unlike the plaintiffs in Flast, the respondents fail the first prong of the test for taxpayer standing. Their claim is deficient in two respects. First, the source of their complaint is not a congressional action, but a decision by HEW to transfer a parcel of federal property. Flast limited taxpayer standing to challenges directed "only [at] exercises of congressional power." See Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War [1974] (denying standing because the taxpayer plaintiffs "did not challenge an enactment under Art. I, § 8, but rather the action of the Executive Branch").Some precedents are perhaps better observed in the breach than in the observance, including this "test for taxpayer standing." The fact that the originating act was executive in nature does make the court any less able to rule on it if it violates the Constitution. Any taxpayer should have standing in any case involving the smallest amount of their money (despite the inconvenience to the court), and the presumption should be that spending less will redress the wrong by lowering taxes by the amount saved (even though in practice government tends to spend anything "saved.") While there are more egregious violations, stopping this gift of taxpayer money and requiring the government to sell the property for fair market value (and better still, remit the increase as at least a token tax reduction) would have set valuable positive precedent.Second, and perhaps redundantly, the property transfer about which respondents complain was not an exercise of the authority conferred by the Taxing and Spending Clause of Art. I, § 8. The authorizing legislation, the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, was an evident exercise of Congress' power under the Property Clause, Art. IV, § 3, cl. 2. Respondents do not dispute this conclusion, and it is decisive of any claim of taxpayer standing under the Flast precedent.