404
Opinion of Thomas, J.
rors. Today's decision, rather than merely reaffirming Powers' misguided doctrine of third-party standing, applies that doctrine to a context in which even Powers' rationales are inapplicable. Because Powers is both incorrect as an initial matter and inapposite to the case at hand, I respectfully dissent from Part III of the Court's opinion. I join Parts I, II, IV, and V and concur in the judgment reversing and remanding to the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Powers broke new ground by holding for the first time that a criminal defendant may raise an equal protection challenge to the use of peremptory strikes to exclude jurors of a different race. See id., at 422 (Scalia, J., dissenting) (explaining that Powers was inconsistent with "a vast body of clear statement" in our precedents). Recognizing that the defendant could not claim that his own equal protection rights had been denied, the Court held that the defendant had standing to assert the equal protection rights of veniremen excluded from the jury. Id., at 410-416. The Court concluded that the defendant had such "third party standing" because three criteria had been met: he had suffered an "injury in fact"; he had a "close relation" to the excluded jurors; and there was "some hindrance" to the jurors' ability to protect their own interests. Id., at 410-411.
Powers distorted standing principles and equal protection law and should be overruled.1 As Justice Scalia explained at length in his dissent, the defendant in Powers
1 As I have explained elsewhere, the entire line of cases following Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79 (1986) (holding that the Equal Protection Clause applies to the use of peremptory strikes), including Powers, is a misguided effort to remedy a general societal wrong by using the Constitution to regulate the traditionally discretionary exercise of peremptory challenges. The Batson doctrine, rather than helping to ensure the fairness of criminal trials, serves only to undercut that fairness by emphasizing the rights of excluded jurors at the expense of the traditional protections accorded criminal defendants of all races. See Georgia v. McCollum, 505 U. S. 42, 60-62 (1992) (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment).
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