66
Opinion of the Court
capacity, however, only if its members would have standing in their own right. See Food and Commercial Workers v. Brown Group, Inc., 517 U. S. 544, 551-553 (1996); Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Comm'n, 432 U. S. 333, 343 (1977). The requisite concrete injury to AOE members is not apparent. As nonparties in the District Court, AOE's members were not bound by the judgment for Yniguez. That judgment had slim precedential effect, see supra, at 58-59, n. 11,21 and it left AOE entirely free to invoke Article XXVIII, § 4, the citizen suit provision, in state court, where AOE could pursue whatever relief state law authorized. Nor do we discern anything flowing from Article XXVIII's citizen suit provision—which authorizes suits to enforce Article XXVIII in state court—that could support standing for Arizona residents in general, or AOE in particular, to defend the Article's constitutionality in federal court.
We thus have grave doubts whether AOE and Park have standing under Article III to pursue appellate review. Nevertheless, we need not definitively resolve the issue. Rather, we will follow a path we have taken before and inquire, as a primary matter, whether originating plaintiff Yniguez still has a case to pursue. See Burke v. Barnes, 479 U. S. 361, 363, 364, n. (1987) (leaving unresolved question of congressional standing because Court determined case was moot). For purposes of that inquiry, we will assume, arguendo, that AOE and Park had standing to place this case before an appellate tribunal. See id., at 366 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (Court properly assumed standing, even though that matter raised a serious question, in order to analyze mootness issue). We may resolve the question whether
21 As the District Court observed, the stare decisis effect of that court's ruling was distinctly limited. The judgment was "not binding on the Arizona state courts [and did] not foreclose any rights of [AOE] or Park in any future state-court proceeding arising out of Article XXVIII." Yniguez v. Mofford, 130 F. R. D. 410, 416 (D. Ariz. 1990).
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