What is standing?
Standing is the constitutional requirement that a plaintiff show a concrete, particularized injury caused by the defendant's conduct that a favorable court ruling could redress. Under Article III of the U.S. Constitution, federal courts can only hear cases brought by someone with standing, and a class action fails at the outset if the named plaintiffs — and often the class definition itself — cannot satisfy it.
Standing has become a major battleground in privacy and data-breach class actions, where courts frequently disagree about whether an increased risk of future harm, without a completed financial loss, counts as a concrete injury under TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez (2021). A class can also run into 'uninjured class member' problems if it is defined broadly enough to sweep in people who were never actually harmed, which some courts treat as a certification defect rather than a standing defect. Standing is assessed at the case level by a judge, not something an individual determines for themselves.
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Last reviewed 2026-08-22.