Cite as: 509 U. S. 43 (1993)
O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment
claim is purely legal and since a delayed opportunity to seek legalization will cause grave uncertainty.
The Court responds to this point by reiterating that class members who failed to apply to the INS have not yet suffered a "concrete" injury, because the INS has not denied them legalization by virtue of the challenged regulations. See ante, at 59-60, n. 20. At present, however, class members are seeking to redress a different, and logically prior, injury: the denial of the very opportunity to apply for legalization.
The Court's ripeness analysis focuses on the wrong question: whether "the promulgation of the challenged regulations [gave] each CSS and LULAC class member a ripe claim." Ante, at 59 (emphasis added). But the question is not whether the class members' claims were ripe at the inception of these suits, when respondents were seeking simply to invalidate the INS regulations and the 12-month application period had not yet closed. Whatever the initial status of those claims, they became ripe once the period had in fact closed and respondents had amended their complaints to seek an extension. In the Regional Rail Reorganization Act Cases, this Court held that "since ripeness is peculiarly a question of timing, it is the situation now rather than the situation at the time of the District Court's decision that must govern." 419 U. S., at 140. Accord, Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 114-118 (1976) (per curiam). Similarly, in the cases before us, it is the situation now (and, as it happens, at the time of the District Courts' orders), rather than at the time of the initial complaints, that must govern.
The Court also suggests that respondents' claim to extend the application period may well be "flatly" barred by 8 U. S. C. § 1255a(f)(2), which provides: "No denial of adjustment of status [under Title II of the Reform Act] based on a late filing of an application for such adjustment may be reviewed by [any] court . . . ." See ante, at 60, n. 20. I find it remarkable that the Court might construe § 1255a(f)(2) as barring any suit seeking to extend the application dead-
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