96
Opinion of the Court
ing question. Post, at 118-119, n. 8. "Bell," Justice Stevens asserts, "held that we have jurisdiction to decide [whether the plaintiff has stated a cause of action] even when it is unclear whether the plaintiff's injuries can be redressed." Post, at 118. The italicized phrase (the italics are his own) invites the reader to believe that Article III redressability was at issue. Not only is this not true, but the whole point of Bell was that it is not true. In Bell, which was decided before Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388 (1971), the District Court had dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds because it believed that (what we would now call) a Bivens action would not lie. This Court held that the nonexistence of a cause of action was no proper basis for a jurisdictional dismissal. Thus, the uncertainty about "whether the plaintiff's injuries can be redressed" to which Justice Stevens refers is simply the uncertainty about whether a cause of action existed—which is precisely what Bell holds not to be an Article III "redressability" question. It would have been a different matter if the relief requested by the plaintiffs in Bell (money damages) would not have remedied their injury in fact; but it of course would. Justice Stevens used to understand the fundamental distinction between arguing no cause of action and arguing no Article III redressability, having written for the Court that the former argument is "not squarely directed at jurisdiction itself, but rather at the existence of a remedy for the alleged violation of . . . federal rights," which issue is " 'not of the jurisdictional sort which the Court raises on its own motion.' " Lake Country Estates, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 440 U. S. 391, 398 (1979) (Stevens, J.), (quoting Mt. Healthy Bd. of Ed. v. Doyle, 429 U. S., at 279).
Justice Stevens also relies on National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. National Assn. of Railroad Passengers, 414 U. S. 453 (1974). Post, at 119-120. But in that case, we did not determine whether a cause of action existed before de-
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