Cite as: 528 U. S. 167 (2000)
Scalia, J., dissenting
8, and 9), or said that the river looks polluted (which is also incompatible with the court's findings), ibid. (Exh. 10). These affiants have established nothing but "subjective apprehensions."
The Court is correct that the District Court explicitly found standing—albeit "by the very slimmest of margins," and as "an awfully close call." App. in No. 97-1246 (CA4), pp. 207-208 (Tr. of Hearing 39-40 (June 30, 1993)). That cautious finding, however, was made in 1993, long before the court's 1997 conclusion that Laidlaw's discharges did not harm the environment. As we have previously recognized, an initial conclusion that plaintiffs have standing is subject to reexamination, particularly if later evidence proves inconsistent with that conclusion. Gladstone, 441 U. S., at 115, and n. 31; Wyoming v. Oklahoma, 502 U. S. 437, 446 (1992). Laidlaw challenged the existence of injury in fact on appeal to the Fourth Circuit, but that court did not reach the question. Thus no lower court has reviewed the injury-in-fact issue in light of the extensive studies that led the District Court to conclude that the environment was not harmed by Laidlaw's discharges.
Inexplicably, the Court is untroubled by this, but proceeds to find injury in fact in the most casual fashion, as though it is merely confirming a careful analysis made below. Although we have previously refused to find standing based on the "conclusory allegations of an affidavit," Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation, 497 U. S. 871, 888 (1990), the Court is content to do just that today. By accepting plaintiffs' vague, contradictory, and unsubstantiated allegations of "concern" about the environment as adequate to prove injury in fact, and accepting them even in the face of a finding that the environment was not demonstrably harmed, the Court makes the injury-in-fact requirement a sham. If there are permit violations, and a member of a plaintiff environmental organization lives near the offending plant, it would be diffi-cult not to satisfy today's lenient standard.
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