Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization , 96 S. Ct. 1917 ( 1976 )

Mr. Justice Powell

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Several indigents and organizations composed of indigents brought this suit against the Secretary of the Treasury and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. They asserted that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) violated the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 (Code) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by issuing a Revenue Ruling allowing favorable tax treatment to a nonprofit hospital that offered only emergency-room services to indigents. We conclude that these plaintiffs lack standing to bring this suit.

I

The Code, in its original version and by subsequent amendment, accords advantageous treatment to several types of nonprofit corporations, including exemption of their income from taxation and deductibility by benefactors of the amounts of their donations. Nonprofit hospitals have never received these benefits as a favored general category, but an individual nonprofit hospital has been able to claim them if it could qualify as a corporation “organized and operated exclusively for . . . charitable . . . purposes” within the meaning of § 501 (c) (3) of the Code, 26 U. S. C. § 501 (c)(3).¹ As the Code does not define the term “charitable,” the status of each nonprofit hospital is determined on a case-by-case basis by the IRS.

In recognition of the need of nonprofit hospitals for some guidelines on qualification as “charitable” corporations, the IRS in 1956 issued Revenue Ruling 56-185.² This Ruling established the position of the IRS to be “that the term 'charitable’ in its legal sense and as it is used in section 501 (c) (3) of the Code contemplates an implied public trust constituted for some public benefit .. . .” In addition, the Ruling set out four “general requirements” that a hospital had to meet, “among other things,” to be considered a charitable organization by the IRS, Only one of those requirements is important here, and it reads as follows:

“It must be operated to the extent of its financial ability for those not able to pay for the services rendered and not exclusively for those who are able and expected to pay. It is normal for hospitals to charge those able to pay for services rendered in order to meet the operating expenses of the institution, without denying medical care or treatment to others unable to pay. The fact that its charity record is relatively low is not conclusive that a hospital is not operated for charitable purposes to the full extent of its financial ability. It may furnish services at reduced rates which are below cost, and thereby render charity in that manner. It may also set aside earnings which it uses for improvements and additions to hospital facilities. It must not, however, refuse to accept patients in need of hospital care who cannot pay for such services. Furthermore, if it operates with the expectation of full payment from all those to whom it renders services, it does not dispense charity merely because some of its patients fail to pay for the services rendered.”

Revenue Ruling 56-185 remained the announced policy with respect to a nonprofit hospital’s “charitable” status for 13 years, until the IRS issued Revenue Ruling 69-545 on November 3, 1969.³ This new Ruling described two unidentified hospitals, referred to simply as Hospital A and Hospital B, which differed significantly in both corporate structure and operating policies.⁴ The description of Hospital A included the following paragraph:

“The hospital operates a full time emergency room and no one requiring emergency care is denied treatment. The hospital otherwise ordinarily limits admissions to those who can pay the cost of their hospitalization, either themselves, or through private health insurance, or with the aid of public programs such as Medicare. Patients who cannot meet the financial requirements for admission are ordinarily referred to another hospital in the community that does serve indigent patients.”

Despite Hospital A’s apparent failure to operate “to the extent of its financial ability for those not able to pay for the services rendered,” as required by Revenue Ruling 56-185, the IRS in this new Ruling held Hospital A exempt as a charitable corporation under §501 (c)(3).⁵ Noting that Revenue Ruling 56-185 had set out requirements for serving indigents “more restrictive" than those applied to Hospital A, the IRS stated that “Revenue Ruling 56-185 is hereby modified to remove therefrom the requirements relating to caring for patients without charge or at rates below cost.”

II

Issuance of Revenue Ruling 69-545 led to the filing of this suit in July 1971 in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, by a group of organizations and individuals. The plaintiff organizations described themselves as an unincorporated association ⁶ and several nonprofit corporations⁷ each of which included low-income persons among its members and represented the interests of all such persons in obtaining hospital care and services. The 12 individual plaintiffs⁸ described themselves as subsisting below, the poverty income levels established by the Federal Government and suffering from medical conditions requiring hospital services. The organizations sued on behalf of their members, and each individual sued on his own behalf and as representative of all other persons similarly situated.

Each of the individuals described an occasion on which he or a member of his family had been disadvantaged in seeking needed hospital services because of indigency. Most involved the refusal of a hospital to admit the person because of his inability to pay a deposit or an advance fee, even though in some instances the person was enrolled in the Medicare program. At least one plaintiff was denied emergency-room treatment because of his inability to pay immediately. And another was treated in the emergency room but then billed and threatened with suit although his indigency had been known at the time of treatment.

According to the complaint, each of the hospitals involved in these incidents had been determined by the Secretary and the Commissioner to be a tax-exempt charitable corporation, and each received substantial private contributions. The Secretary and the Commissioner were the only defendants. The complaint alleged that by extending tax benefits to such hospitals despite their refusals fully to serve the indigent, the defendants were “encouraging” the hospitals to deny services to the individual plaintiffs and to the members and clients of the plaintiff organizations. Those persons were alleged to be suffering “injury in their opportunity and ability to receive hospital services in nonprofit hospitals which receive . . . benefits ... as ‘charitable’ organizations” under the Code. They also were alleged to be among the intended beneficiaries of the Code sections that grant favorable tax treatment to “charitable” organizations.

Plaintiffs made two principal claims. The first was that in issuing Revenue Ruling 69-545 the defendants had violated the Code, and that in granting charitable-corporation treatment to nonprofit hospitals that refused fully to serve indigents the defendants continued the violation. Their theory was that the legislative history of the Code, regulations of the IRS, and judicial precedent had established the term “charitable” in the Code to mean “relief of the poor,” and that the challenged Ruling and current practice of the IRS departed from that interpretation. Plaintiffs’ second claim was that the issuance of Revenue Ruling 69-545 without a public hearing and an opportunity for submission of views had violated the rulemaking procedures of the APA, 5 U. S. C. § 553. The theory of this claim was that the Ruling should be considered a “substantive" rule as opposed to the “interpretative” type of rule that is exempted from the requirements of § 553.⁹ Plaintiffs sought various forms of declaratory and injunctive relief.¹⁰

By a motion to dismiss, defendants challenged plaintiffs’ standing, suggested the non justiciability of the subject matter of the suit, and asserted that in any event the action was barred by the Anti-Injunction Act,¹¹ the tax limitation in the Declaratory Judgment Act,¹² and the doctrine of sovereign immunity. The District Court denied this motion without opinion. On subsequent cross-motions for summary judgment the court considered but rejected each of defendants’ arguments against its reaching the merits. The court then held that Revenue Ruling 69-545 was “improperly promulgated” and “without effect” insofar as it permitted nonprofit hospitals to qualify for tax treatment as charities without their offering “special financial consideration to persons unable to pay.” 370 F. Supp. 325, 338 (1973).¹³

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed. 165 U. S. App. D. C. 239, 506 F. 2d 1278 (1974). It agreed with the District Court’s rejection of defendants’ jurisdictional contentions, but held on the merits that Revenue Ruling 69-545 was founded upon a permissible definition of “charitable” and was not contrary to congressional intent in the Code. As to the plaintiffs’ APA claim, which the District Court had not reached, the Court of Appeals held that Revenue Ruling 69-545 was an “interpretative” ruling and thus exempt from the APA’s rulemaking requirements.

Plaintiffs sought a writ of certiorari in No. 74 — 1110 to review the Court of Appeals’ judgment on the merits. Defendants filed a cross-petition in No. 74-1124 seeking review of that court’s decision on the jurisdictional issues if plaintiffs’ petition should be granted. We granted both petitions and consolidated them. 421 U. S. 975 (1975). Since we deal with defendants’ contentions in No. 74^1124 first, and find it unnecessary to reach the issues raised by plaintiffs in No. 74-1110, we shall refer to defendants below as petitioners and to plaintiffs below as respondents.

Ill

In this Court petitioners have argued that a policy of the IRS to tax or not to tax certain individuals or organizations, whether embodied in a Revenue Ruling or otherwise developed, cannot be challenged by third parties whose own tax liabilities are not affected. Their theory is that the entire history of this country’s revenue system, including but not limited to the evolution of the Code, manifests a consistent congressional intent to vest exclusive authority for the administration of the tax laws in the Secretary and his duly authorized delegates, subject to oversight by the appropriate committees of Congress itself. It is argued that allowing third-party suits questioning the tax treatment accorded other taxpayers would transfer determination of general revenue policy away from those to whom Congress has entrusted it and vest it in the federal courts.¹⁴

In addition, petitioners analogize the discretion vested in the IRS with respect to administration of the tax laws to the discretion of a public prosecutor as to when and whom to prosecute. They thus invoke the settled doctrine that the exercise of prosecutorial discretion cannot be challenged by one who is himself neither prosecuted nor threatened with prosecution. See Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U. S. 614, 619 (1973). Petitioners also renew their jurisdictional contentions that this action is barred by the Anti-Injunction Act, the Declaratory Judgment Act, and the doctrine of sovereign immunity.

We do not reach either the question of whether a third party ever may challenge IRS treatment of another, or the question of whether there is a statutory or an immunity bar to this suit. We conclude that the District Court should have granted petitioners’ motion to dismiss on the ground that respondents’ complaint failed to establish their standing to sue.¹⁵

IV

No principle is more fundamental to the judiciary’s proper role in our system of government than the constitutional limitation of federal-court jurisdiction to actual cases or controversies. See Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S. 83, 95 (1968). The concept of standing is part of this limitation. Unlike other associated doctrines, for example, that which restrains federal courts from deciding political questions, standing “focuses on the party seeking to get his complaint before a federal court and not on the issues he wishes to have adjudicated.” Id., at 99. As we reiterated last Term, the standing question in its Art. Ill aspect “is whether the plaintiff has ‘alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy’ as to warrant his invocation of federal-court jurisdiction and to justify exercise of the court’s remedial powers on his behalf.” Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 498-499 (1975) (emphasis in original). In sum, when a plaintiff’s standing is brought into issue the relevant inquiry is whether, assuming justiciability of the claim, the plaintiff has shown an injury to himself that is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision. Absent such a showing, exercise of its power by a federal court would be gratuitous and thus inconsistent with the Art. Ill limitation.¹⁶

Respondents brought this action under § 10 of the APA, 5 U. S. C. § 702, which gives a right to judicial review to any person “adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute.”¹⁷ In Data Processing Service v. Camp, 397 U. S. 150 (1969), this Court held the constitutional standing requirement under this section to be allegations which, if true, would establish that the plaintiff had been injured in fact by the action he sought to have reviewed. Reduction of the threshold requirement to actual injury redressable by the court represented a substantial broadening of access to the federal courts over that previously thought to be the constitutional minimum under this statute.¹⁸ But, as this Court emphasized in Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U. S. 727, 738 (1972), “broadening the categories of injury that may be alleged in support of standing is a different matter from abandoning the requirement that the party seeking review must himself have suffered an injury.” See also United States v. Richardson, 418 U. S. 166, 194 (1974) (Powell, J., concurring). The necessity that the plaintiff who seeks to invoke judicial power stand to profit in some personal interest remains an Art. Ill requirement. A federal court cannot ignore this requirement without overstepping its assigned role in our system of adjudicating only actual cases and controversies.¹⁹ It is according to this settled principle that the allegations of both the individual respondents and the respondent organizations must be tested for sufficiency.

A

We note at the outset that the five respondent organizations, which described themselves as dedicated to promoting access of the poor to health services, could not establish their standing simply on the basis of that goal. Our decisions make clear that an organization’s abstract concern with a subject that could be affected by an adjudication does not substitute for the concrete injury required by Art. III. Sierra Club v. Morton, supra; see Warth v. Seldin, supra. Insofar as these organizations seek standing based on their special interest in the health problems of the poor their complaint must fail. Since they allege no injury to themselves as organizations, and indeed could not in the context of this suit, they can establish standing only as representatives of those of their members who have been injured in fact, and thus could have brought suit in their own right. Warth v. Seldin, supra, at 511. The standing question in this suit therefore turns upon whether any individual respondent has established an actual injury,²⁰ or whether the respondent organizations have established actual injury to any of their indigent members.

B

The obvious interest of all respondents, to which they claim actual injury, is that of access to hospital services. In one sense, of course, they have suffered injury to that interest. The complaint alleges specific occasions on which each of the individual respondents sought but was denied hospital services solely due to his indigency,²¹ and in at least some of the cases it is clear that the needed treatment was unavailable, as a practical matter, anywhere else. The complaint also alleges that members of the respondent organizations need hospital services but live in communities in which the private hospitals do not serve indigents. We thus assume, for purpose of analysis, that some members have been denied service. But injury at the hands of a hospital is insufficient by itself to establish a case or controversy in the context of this suit, for no hospital is a defendant. The only defendants are officials of the Department of the Treasury, and the only claims of illegal action respondents desire the courts to adjudicate are charged to those officials. “Although the law of standing has been greatly changed in [recent] years, we have steadfastly adhered to the requirement that, at least in the absence of a statute expressly conferring standing, federal plaintiffs must allege some threatened or actual injury resulting from the putatively illegal action before a federal court may assume jurisdiction.” Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U. S., at 617.²² In other words, the “case or controversy” limitation of Art. Ill still requires that a federal court act only to redress injury that fairly can be traced to the challenged action of the defendant, and not injury that results from the independent action of some third party not before the court.

The complaint here alleged only that petitioners, by the adoption of Revenue Ruling 69-545, had “encouraged” hospitals to deny services to indigents.²³ The implicit corollary of this allegation is that a grant of respondents’ requested relief, resulting in a requirement that all hospitals serve indigents as a condition to favorable tax treatment, would “discourage” hospitals from denying their services to respondents. But it does not follow from the allegation and its corollary that the denial of access to hospital services in fact results from petitioners’ new Ruling, or that a court-ordered return by petitioners to their previous policy would result in these respondents’ receiving the hospital services they desire. It is purely speculative whether the denials of service specified in the complaint fairly can be traced to petitioners’ “encouragement” or instead result from decisions made by the hospitals without regard to the tax implications.

It is equally speculative whether the desired exercise of the court’s remedial powers in this suit would result in the availability to respondents of such services. So far as the complaint sheds light, it is just as plausible that the hospitals to which respondents may apply for service would elect to forgo favorable tax treatment to avoid the undetermined financial drain of an increase in the level of uncompensated services. It is true that the individual respondents have alleged, upon information and belief, that the hospitals that denied them service receive substantial donations deductible by the donors. This allegation could support an inference that these hospitals, or some of them, are so financially dependent upon the favorable tax treatment afforded charitable organizations that they would admit respondents if a court required such admission as a condition to receipt of that treatment. But this inference is speculative at best.²⁴ The Solicitor General states in his brief that, nationwide, private philanthropy accounts for only 4% of private hospital revenues. Respondents introduced in the District Court a statement to Congress by an official of a hospital association describing the importance to nonprofit hospitals of the favorable tax treatment they receive as charitable corporations. Such conflicting evidence supports the commonsense proposition that the dependence upon special tax benefits may vary from hospital to hospital. Thus, respondents’ allegation that certain hospitals receive substantial charitable contributions, without more, does not establish the further proposition that those hospitals are dependent upon such contributions.

Prior decisions of this Court establish that unadorned speculation will not suffice to invoke the federal judicial power. In Linda R. S. v. Richard D., the mother of an illegitimate child averred that state-court interpretation of a criminal child support statute as applying only to fathers of legitimate children violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. She sought an injunction requiring the district attorney to enforce the statute against the father of her child. We held that the mother lacked standing, because she had “made no showing that her failure to secure support payments results from the nonenforcement, as to her child's father, of [the statute].” 410 U. S., at 618. The prospect that the requested prosecution in fact would result in the payment of child support — instead of jailing the father — was “only speculative.” Ibid. Similarly, last Term in Warth v. Seldin we held that low-income persons seeking the invalidation of a town's restrictive zoning ordinance lacked standing because they had failed to show that the alleged injury, inability to obtain adequate housing within their means, was fairly attributable to the challenged ordinance instead of to other factors. In language directly applicable to this litigation, we there noted that plaintiffs relied “on little more than the remote possibility, unsubstantiated by allegations of fact, that their situation might have been better had [defendants] acted otherwise, and might improve were the court to afford relief.” 422 U. S., at 507.

The principle of Linda R. S. and Warth controls this case. As stated in Warth, that principle is that indirectness of injury, while not necessarily fatal to standing, “may make it substantially more difficult to meet the minimum requirement of Art. Ill: to establish that, in fact, the asserted injury was the consequence of the defendants’ actions, or that prospective relief will remove the harm.” 422 U. S., at 505. Respondents have failed to carry this burden. Speculative inferences are necessary to connect their injury to the challenged actions of petitioners.²⁵ Moreover, the complaint suggests no substantial likelihood that victory in this suit would result in respondents’ receiving the hospital treatment they desire. A federal court, properly cognizant of the Art. Ill limitation upon its jurisdiction, must require more than respondents have shown before proceeding to the merits.

Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the cause is remanded to the District Court with instructions to dismiss the complaint.

It is so ordered.

Mr. Justice Stevens took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.

1 Section 501 is the linchpin of the statutory benefit system. Subsection (a) states that organizations described in subsection (c) “shall be exempt from taxation under this subtitle . . . .” Among the organizations described in current subsection (c) (3) are nonprofit corporations “organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals.” (Emphasis added.) Deduction by either an individual or a corporate taxpayer of a contribution to a nonprofit charitable corporation is allowed by §§ 170 (a), (c) (2). 26 U. S. C. §§170 (a), (c)(2). Other indirect benefits to such a corporation, similar in nature to the benefit it derives from third-party deduct-ibility of contributions, are provided by various other sections of the Code. See 26 IT. S. C. §§ 642 (e), 2055 (a) (2), 2106 (a) (2) (A) (ii), 2522 (a) (2) and (b)(2).

2 1956-1 Cum. Bull. 202.

3 1969-2 Cum. Bull. 117. The substance of this Ruling had been issued as a policy pronouncement approximately one month earlier. Technical Info. Rel, 1022 (Oct. 8, 1969).

4 The descriptions fit, in whole or in part, actual hospitals as to whose tax status either a taxpayer or an IRS field office had requested advice. . The anonymous reference to the hospitals in Revenue Ruling 69-545 conformed to the IRS practice of deleting “identifying details and confidential information” contained in such requests, which are dealt with privately before the underlying fact situation is used in a published Revenue Ruling. See 1969-2 Cum. Bull. xxii.

5 In reaching this conclusion the IRS cited the law of trusts for the premise that promotion of health was a “charitable” purpose provided only that the class of direct beneficiaries was sufficiently large that its receipt of health services could be said to benefit the community as a whole. See Restatement (Second) of Trusts §§ 368, 372 (1959); 4 A. Scott, Law of Trusts §§368, 372 (3d ed. 1967). The IRS then applied that premise to Hospital A and concluded that by maintaining an open emergency room and providing hospital care to all persons able to pay, either directly or through insurance, the hospital served a large enough class to qualify as charitable.

6 California Welfare Rights Organization.

7 Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization; National Tenants Organization; Association of Disabled Miners and Widows, Inc.; Health, Education, Advisory Team, Inc.

8 One of the 12, a minor, sued by and through his parents, who also were named plaintiffs.

9 Section 553 (b) states that “[e]xcept when notice or hearing is required by statute, this subsection does not apply — (A) to interpretative rules . . .

Plaintiffs also claimed that issuance of Revenue Ruling 69-545 amounted to an abuse of discretion and denied them due process of law. These claims were treated summarily or not at all by the courts below, and plaintiffs have not pressed them in this Court.

10 Plaintiffs requested judicial declarations that defendants had violated the Code and the APA, and that a hospital's charitable status required provision of full services to persons unable to pay and those on Medicaid. In addition, they sought to enjoin defendants to suspend charitable-organization treatment of, and to refrain from extending such treatment to, any hospital that failed to submit proof, on forms to be approved by the District Court, that it served indigents and those on Medicaid without either requiring advance deposits or attempting to collect, once service had been rendered. Plaintiffs also asked the District Court to order collection of all taxes “due and owing” because of the allegedly “illegal” extension of charitable status to hospitals that refused to serve indigents.

11 “ [N] o suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the person against whom such tax was assessed.” 26 U. S. C. § 7421 (a).

12 “In a case of actual controversy within its jurisdiction, except with respect to Federal taxes, any court of the United States, upon the filing of an appropriate pleading, may declare the rights and other legal relations of any interested party seeking such declaration, whether or not further relief is or could be sought.” 28 U. S. C. § 2201 (emphasis added).

13 The court entered a declaratory judgment to that effect and enjoined defendants from extending tax-exempt status to a nonprofit hospital, or allowing deductions for contributions to it, until the hospital had satisfied the requirements of previous Revenue Ruling 56-185 regarding service to indigents and had posted in its public areas a court-approved notice reciting those requirements.

14 Petitioners rely in part upon this Court’s decision in Louisiana v. McAdoo, 234 U. S. 627 (1914), as precedent for their position. In that case the State of Louisiana, as a producer of sugar, brought suit challenging the tariff rates applied by the Secretary of the Treasury to sugar imported from Cuba. This Court ordered the suit dismissed. Petitioners rely particularly upon statements in the opinion that maintenance of such actions “would operate to disturb the whole revenue system of the Government,” and that “[interference [by the courts] in such a case would be to interfere with the ordinary functions of government.” Id., at 632, 633. In view of our disposition, we express no opinion on the application of McAdoo to this kind of case.

15 As noted, supra, at 34-35, the District Court considered petitioners’ jurisdictional arguments, including their challenge to respondents’ standing, when it ruled on cross-motions for summary judgment. The affidavits submitted by respondents merely supported the allegations of the complaint relative to establishing standing, rather than going beyond them. Thus, the standing analysis is no different, as a result of the case having proceeded to summary judgment, than it would have been at the pleading stage. Cf. Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 501-502 (1975).

16 This Court often has noted that the focus upon the plaintiff's stake in the outcome of the issue he seeks to have adjudicated serves a separate and equally important function bearing upon the nature of the judicial process. As stated in Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 204 (1962), a significant personal stake serves “to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult . . . questions.”

17 “A person suffering legal wrong because of agency action, or adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute, is entitled to judicial review thereof.” 5 U. S. C. § 702.

18 The previous view can be found in Kansas City Power & Light Co. v. McKay, 96 U. S. App. D. C. 273, 281, 225 F. 2d 924, 932 (1955). See Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U. S. 727, 733 (1972).

19 The Data Processing decision established a second, nonconstitu-tional standing requirement that the interest of the plaintiff, regardless of its nature in the absolute, at least be “arguably within the zone of interests to be protected or regulated” by the statutory framework within which his claim arises. See 397 U. S., at 153. As noted earlier, respondents in this case claim that they, and of course their particular interests involved in this suit, are the intended beneficiaries of the charitable organization provisions of the Code. In view of our disposition of this case, we need not consider this “zone of interests” test.

20 The individual respondents sought to maintain this suit as a class action on behalf of all persons similarly situated. That a suit may be a class action, however, adds nothing to the question of standing, for even named plaintiffs who represent a class “must allege and show that they personally have been injured, not that injury has been suffered by other, unidentified members of the class to which they belong and which they purport to represent.” Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S., at 502.

21 One of the individual respondents complains, not that he was denied service, but that he was treated and then billed despite the hospital’s knowledge of his indigency. This variation of the injury does not change the standing analysis.

22 The reference in Linda R. S. to “a statute expressly conferring standing” was in recognition of Congress’ power to create new interests the invasion of which will confer standing. See 410 U. S., at 617 n. 3; Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 409 U. S. 205 (1972). When Congress has so acted, the requirements of Art. Ill remain: “[T]he plaintiff still must allege a distinct and palpable injury to himself, even if it is an injury shared by a large class of other possible litigants.” Warth v. Seldin, supra, at 501. See also United States v. SCRAP, 412 U. S. 669 (1973); cf. Sierra Club v. Morton, supra, at 732 n. 3.

23 The Court of Appeals, in sustaining Revenue Ruling 69-545 on the merits, relied in part upon its conclusion that the new IRS policy, which apparently requires a hospital to provide free emergency care to indigents, may result in as much or more relief to the poor than the policy of the previous Ruling. Much of respondents’ argument, and that of several of the amici, have been directed against that conclusion. As we do not reach the merits, we need not consider this question. But we accept for purposes of the standing inquiry respondents’ averment that the IRS’s new policy encourages a hospital to provide fewer services to indigents than it might have under the previous policy.

We do note, however, that it is entirely speculative whether even the earlier Ruling would have assured the medical care they desire. It required a hospital to provide care for the indigent only “to the extent of its financial ability,” and stated that a low charity record was not conclusive that a hospital had failed to meet that duty. See supra, at 30. Thus, a hospital could not maintain, consistently with Revenue Ruling 56-185, a general policy of refusing care to all patients unable to pay. But the number of such patients accepted, and whether any particular applicant would be admitted, would depend upon the financial ability of the hospital to which admittance was sought.

24 The complaint reveals nothing at all about the dependence upon charitable contributions of any hospitals that might have denied services to members of respondent organizations. See supra, at 40-41.

25 The courts below' erroneously believed that United States v. SCRAP supported respondents’ standing. In SCRAP, although the injury was indirect and “the Court was asked to follow [an] attenuated line of causation,” 412 U. S., at 688, the complaint nevertheless “alleged a specific and perceptible harm” flowing from the agency action. Id., at 689. Such a complaint withstood a motion to dismiss, although it might not have survived challenge on a motion for summary judgment. Id., at 689, and n. 15. But in this case the complaint is insufficient even to survive a motion to dismiss, for it fails to allege an injury that fairly can be traced to petitioners’ challenged action. See supra, at 40-43. Nor did the affidavits before the District Court at the summary judgment stage supply the missing link.

Our decision is also consistent with Data Processing Service v. Camp, 397 U. S. 150 (1969). The Court there stated: “The first question is whether the plaintiff alleges that the challenged action has caused him injury in fact, economic or otherwise.” Id., at 152. The complaint in Data Processing alleged injury that was directly traceable to the action of the defendant federal official, for it complained of injurious competition that would have been illegal without that action. Accord, Arnold Tours, Inc. v. Camp, 400 U. S. 45 (1970); Investment Co. Institute v. Camp, 401 U. S. 617, 620-621 (1971). Similarly, the complaint in Data Processing’s companion case of Barlow v. Collins, 397 U. S. 159 (1970), was sufficient because it alleged extortionate demands by plaintiffs’ landlord made possible only by the challenged action of the defendant federal official. See id., at 162-163. In the instant case respondents’ injuries might have occurred even in the absence of the IRS Ruling that they challenge; whether the injuries fairly can be traced to that Ruling depends upon unalleged and unknown facts about the relevant hospitals.