Cite as: 528 U. S. 167 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
the Court, made in a different context nearly 60 years ago, hold true here as well:
"How to effectuate policy—the adaptation of means to legitimately sought ends—is one of the most intractable of legislative problems. Whether proscribed conduct is to be deterred by qui tam action or triple damages or injunction, or by criminal prosecution, or merely by defense to actions in contract, or by some, or all, of these remedies in combination, is a matter within the legislature's range of choice. Judgment on the deterrent effect of the various weapons in the armory of the law can lay little claim to scientific basis." Tigner v. Texas, 310 U. S. 141, 148 (1940).3
In this case we need not explore the outer limits of the principle that civil penalties provide sufficient deterrence to support redressability. Here, the civil penalties sought by FOE carried with them a deterrent effect that made it likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the penalties would redress FOE's injuries by abating current violations and preventing future ones—as the District Court reasonably found when it assessed a penalty of $405,800. 956 F. Supp., at 610-611.
Laidlaw contends that the reasoning of our decision in Steel Co. directs the conclusion that citizen plaintiffs have no standing to seek civil penalties under the Act. We disagree. Steel Co. established that citizen suitors lack standing to seek civil penalties for violations that have abated by the time of suit. 523 U. S., at 106-107. We specifically noted in that case that there was no allegation in the complaint of any continuing or imminent violation, and that no basis for such an allegation appeared to exist. Id., at 108; see also Gwaltney, 484 U. S., at 59 ("the harm sought to be addressed by
3 In Tigner the Court rejected an equal protection challenge to a statutory provision exempting agricultural producers from the reach of the Texas antitrust laws.
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