Cite as: 523 U. S. 420 (1998)
O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment
that a vendor was the "least awkward challenger" to the gender-based distinction. Id., at 197. We reasoned that prudential objectives would not be served by rejecting third-party standing because "the lower court already ha[d] entertained the relevant constitutional challenge." Id., at 193. Here, however, the court below expressly did not take account of Charlie Miller's equal protection rights, instead reviewing petitioner's challenge as a first-party claim of gender discrimination against the children of citizen fathers as opposed to the children of citizen mothers. See 96 F. 3d 1467, 1470 (CADC 1996).
More importantly, since this Court decided Craig, we have articulated the contours of the third-party standing inquiry in greater detail. In Powers v. Ohio, 499 U. S. 400 (1991), we stated that a litigant seeking to assert the rights of another party must satisfy three interrelated criteria: "The litigant must have suffered an injury in fact, thus giving him or her a sufficiently concrete interest in the outcome of the issue in dispute; the litigant must have a close relation to the third party; and there must exist some hindrance to the third party's ability to protect his or her own interests." Id., at 411 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted); see also Campbell v. Louisiana, ante, at 397-398. While it seems clear that petitioner has a significant stake in challenging the statute and a close relationship with her father, she has not demonstrated a substantial hindrance to her father's ability to assert his own rights. Powers and our earlier precedents suggest that the absence of such an obstacle precludes third-party standing. See 499 U. S., at 411 (explaining that "[all] three important criteria [must be] satisfied," i. e., that there "must exist some hindrance to the third party's ability to protect his or her own interests" before the presumption is rebutted); see also Singleton, supra, at 116 ("Even where the relationship is close, the reasons for requiring persons to assert their own rights will generally still apply").
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