106
Opinion of the Court
porting, or to eliminate any effects of that late reporting upon respondent.7
The first item, the request for a declaratory judgment that petitioner violated EPCRA, can be disposed of summarily. There being no controversy over whether petitioner failed to file reports, or over whether such a failure constitutes a violation, the declaratory judgment is not only worthless to respondent, it is seemingly worthless to all the world. See Lewis v. Continental Bank Corp., 494 U. S. 472, 479 (1990).
Item (4), the civil penalties authorized by the statute, see § 11045(c), might be viewed as a sort of compensation or redress to respondent if they were payable to respondent. But they are not. These penalties—the only damages authorized by EPCRA—are payable to the United States Treasury. In requesting them, therefore, respondent seeks not remediation of its own injury—reimbursement for the costs it incurred as a result of the late filing—but vindication of the rule of law—the "undifferentiated public interest" in faithful execution of EPCRA. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, supra, at 577; see also Fairchild v. Hughes, 258 U. S. 126, 129-130 (1922). This does not suffice. Justice Stevens thinks it is enough that respondent will be gratified by seeing petitioner punished for its infractions and that the
7 Justice Stevens claims that redressability was found lacking in our prior cases because the relief required action by a party not before the Court. Post, at 125-126. Even if that were so, it would not prove that redressability is lacking only when relief depends on the actions of a third party. But in any event, Justice Stevens has overlooked decisions that destroy his premise. See Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 105 (1983); O'Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S. 488, 495-496 (1974). He also seems to suggest that redressability always exists when the defendant has directly injured the plaintiff. If that were so, the redressability requirement would be entirely superfluous, since the causation requirement asks whether the injury is "fairly . . . trace[able] to the challenged action of the defendant, and not . . . th[e] resul[t] [of] the independent action of some third party not before the court." Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U. S. 26, 41-42 (1976).
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