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View Full Version : When does No Standing mean?


3lovinkids
Mar 19, 2009, 01:09 PM
What does no standing mean in the courts in the state of pa.

cadillac59
Mar 19, 2009, 07:18 PM
Not having legal standing means you do not have the legal right to be involved in the court case you are trying to be involved in. There could be many examples but hearing your particular situation would make it easier to understand.

Here's a kind of crude example: let's say you didn't like the man your sister married so you decided to file a divorce action in your name against your sister's husband and ask the court enter a decree that your sister would be divorced from her husband. Now obviously you couldn't do that. Why? Because you do not have standing to bring a divorce action on your sister's behalf--i.e. it's not your marriage, hence it's not your case (an exception might be if your sister were mentally ill and you applied to the court to be her Guardian ad litem to file the divorce action, but that's a different matter).

More true-to-life examples might be in cases involving the constitutionality of certain statutes. Let's say for example a state had some law that restricted a woman's right to an abortion. But you, as a man, didn't like that law and sued in your own name to have the law declared unconstitutional. The court would likely throw your case out because you lacked standing-- in other words, as a male you would never be directly impacted by the statute's abortion restrictions so you, having no personal stake in what the law addressed, have no business wasting the court's time with your dislike of the law. See the way it works? But a pregnant woman contemplating an abortion and affected by the statute would have standing.