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Syllabus
tion jurisdictional, rather than as merely specifying the remedial powers of the court. Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd. v. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc., 484 U. S. 49, as well as cases deciding a statutory standing question before a constitutional standing question, distinguished. In no case has this Court called the existence of a cause of action "jurisdictional," and decided that question before resolving a dispute concerning the existence of an Article III case or controversy. Such a principle would turn every statutory question in an EPCRA citizen suit into a question of jurisdiction that this Court would have to consider—indeed, raise sua sponte—even if not raised below. Pp. 88-93.
(b) This Court declines to endorse the "doctrine of hypothetical jurisdiction," under which several Courts of Appeals have found it proper to proceed immediately to the merits question, despite jurisdictional objections, at least where (1) the merits question is more readily resolved, and (2) the prevailing party on the merits would be the same as the prevailing party were jurisdiction denied. That doctrine carries the courts beyond the bounds of authorized judicial action and thus offends fundamental separation-of-powers principles. In a long and venerable line of cases, this Court has held that, without proper jurisdiction, a court cannot proceed at all, but can only note the jurisdictional defect and dismiss the suit. See, e. g., Capron v. Van Noorden, 2 Cranch 126; Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U. S. 43, 73. Bell v. Hood, supra; National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. National Assn. of Railroad Passengers, 414 U. S. 453, 465, n. 13; Norton v. Mathews, 427 U. S. 524, 531; Secretary of Navy v. Avrech, 418 U. S. 676, 678 (per curiam); United States v. Augenblick, 393 U. S. 348; Philbrook v. Glodgett, 421 U. S. 707, 721; and Chandler v. Judicial Council of Tenth Circuit, 398 U. S. 74, 86-88, distinguished. For a court to pronounce upon a law's meaning or constitutionality when it has no jurisdiction to do so is, by very definition, an ultra vires act. Pp. 93-102.
(c) Respondent lacks standing to sue. Standing is the "irreducible constitutional minimum" necessary to make a justiciable "case" or "controversy" under Article III, § 2. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560. It contains three requirements: injury in fact to the plaintiff, causation of that injury by the defendant's complained-of conduct, and a likelihood that the requested relief will redress that injury. E. g., ibid. Even assuming, as respondent asserts, that petitioner's failure to report EPCRA information in a timely manner, and the lingering effects of that failure, constitute a concrete injury in fact to respondent and its members that satisfies Article III, cf. id., at 578, the complaint nevertheless fails the redressability test: None of the specific items of relief sought—a declaratory judgment that petitioner violated EPCRA;
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