Cite as: 510 U. S. 1301 (1993)
Opinion in Chambers
certain categories of applicants, not arrest or deport certain classes of immigrants, and temporarily grant certain classes of immigrants stays of deportation and employment authorizations.
On June 18, 1993, this Court decided Reno v. Catholic Social Services, Inc., 509 U. S. 43 (1993) (CSS), a case involving a very similar challenge to another portion of IRCA. In CSS, we held that the claims of most of the plaintiff aliens were barred by the ripeness doctrine. A federal court, we held, generally ought not entertain a request for an injunction or declaratory judgment regarding the validity of an administrative regulation unless it is brought by someone who has actually been concretely affected by the regulation. Id., at 57-58. The mere existence of the regulation, we held, was not enough; rather, the regulation must actually have been applied to the plaintiff. Ibid. We concluded that the only people who could ask for injunctive or declaratory relief under IRCA were those who were told by the INS that they should not even bother to file their applications—a policy called "front-desking"—and perhaps also those who could show that the front-desking policy was a substantial cause of their failure to apply in the first place. Id., at 61-67, and n. 28. Under the statute, aliens who did apply and whose applications were considered but rejected could only get judicial review of this rejection if the INS tried to deport them. 8 U. S. C. § 1255a(f)(1).
In light of our decision in CSS, the Government asked the District Court to vacate its order, on the theory that respondents' claims here, like the claims of the CSS plaintiffs, were not ripe. The District Court, however, disagreed. The CSS plaintiffs, the District Court pointed out, were individual aliens, whereas the plaintiffs in this case are organizations. The District Court concluded that the organizations had "suffered a concrete and demonstrable injury" because "the challenged regulations drained organizational resources and impaired their ability to assist and counsel nonimmi-
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