Dianne Feinstein in Alito Confirmation Hearings

On Environment: Citizens need standing to sue under Clean Water Act

SEN. FEINSTEIN: The Clean Water Act included a provision permitting citizens or citizen groups to bring lawsuits for violation of the act. In NJ-PIRG v. Magnesium Elektron, a citizens environmental group sued a chemical manufacturer for polluting a river The trial court found that the defendant committed 150 Clean Water Act violations. On appeal you overturned the trial court's decision, even though it was undisputed that the defendant committed the 150 violations. Your decision was based upon your conclusion that the environmental group did not have standing to sue, because even though members of the environmental group had stopped using the river due to the pollution, they did not prove any injury to the environment. The decision, if broadly applied, would have gutted the citizen lawsuit provision of the Clean Water Act.

ALITO: You have to have a plaintiff who has suffered injury in fact. Everybody on the panel agreed that the plaintiffs in that case had not even alleged personal injury.

Source: Sam Alito Senate Confirmation Hearings Jan 11, 2006

The above quotations are from Samuel Alito, Senate confirmation hearings for his Supreme Court nomination, January 2006 (plus commentary). Click here for a profile of Dianne Feinstein.
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