Cite as: 522 U. S. 479 (1998)
O'Connor, J., dissenting
among Congress's concerns when it enacted the Federal Credit Union Act," and that the common bond provision was motivated by "[c]ongressional concerns that chartering credit unions could inflict an unwanted competitive injury on the commercial banking industry." Brief for Respondents 24-25. The Court instead asks simply whether respondents have an interest in enforcing the common bond provision, an approach tantamount to abolishing the zone-of-interests requirement altogether.
II
Contrary to the Court's suggestion, ante, at 494-495, its application of the zone-of-interests test in this action is not in concert with the approach we followed in a series of cases in which the plaintiffs, like respondents here, alleged that agency interpretation of a statute caused competitive injury to their commercial interests. In each of those cases, we focused, as in Bennett, Air Courier, and National Wildlife Federation, on whether competitive injury to the plaintiff's commercial interest fell within the zone of interests protected by the relevant statute.
The earliest of the competitor standing decisions was Association of Data Processing Service Organizations, Inc. v. Camp, 397 U. S. 150 (1970), in which we first formulated the zone-of-interests requirement. There, an association of data processors challenged a decision of the Comptroller of the Currency allowing national banks to provide data processing services. The data processors alleged violation of, among other statutes, § 4 of the Bank Service Corporation Act, 76 Stat. 1132, which provided that "[n]o bank service corporation may engage in any activity other than the performance of bank services." 397 U. S., at 154-155. We articulated the applicable test as "whether the interest sought to be protected by the complainant is arguably within the zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the statute . . . in question." Id., at 153.
509
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