Cite as: 522 U. S. 479 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
whom are employees of AT&T and its affiliates. See Brief for Petitioner NCUA 9. The remaining members are employees of such diverse companies as the Lee Apparel Company, the Coca-Cola Bottling Company, the Ciba-Geigy Corporation, the Duke Power Company, and the American Tobacco Company. See App. 54-79.
In 1990, after the NCUA approved a series of amendments to ATTF's charter that added several such unrelated employer groups to ATTF's membership, respondents brought this action. Invoking the judicial review provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U. S. C. § 702, respondents claimed that the NCUA's approval of the charter amendments was contrary to law because the members of the new groups did not share a common bond of occupation with ATTF's existing members, as respondents alleged § 109 required. ATTF and petitioner Credit Union National Association were permitted to intervene in the action as defendants.
The District Court dismissed the complaint. It held that respondents lacked prudential standing to challenge the NCUA's chartering decision because their interests were not within the "zone of interests" to be protected by § 109, as required by this Court's cases interpreting the APA. First Nat. Bank & Trust Co. v. National Credit Union Admin., 772 F. Supp. 609 (DC 1991). The District Court rejected as irrelevant respondents' claims that the NCUA's interpretation had caused them competitive injury, stating that the legislative history of the FCUA demonstrated that it was passed "to establish a place for credit unions within the country's financial market, and specifically not to protect the competitive interest of banks." Id., at 612. The District Court also determined that respondents were not "suitable challengers" to the NCUA's interpretation, as that term had been used in prior prudential standing cases from the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Ibid.
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