author: Justice Souter

text:
    UNITED STATES v. NOLAND, trustee for debtor FIRST TRUCK LINES, INC.
    No. 95-323.
    Argued March 25, 1996
    Decided May 13, 1996

      Souter, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

      Kent L. Jones argued the cause for the United States. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Days, Assistant Attorney General Argrett, Deputy Solicitor General Wallace, Gary D. Gray, and Edward T Perelmuter.

      Raymond J. Pikna, Jr., argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Thomas R. Noland and Gregory P. Garner.

   Justice Souter

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The issue in this case is' the scope of a bankruptcy court’s power of equitable subordination under 11 U. S. C. § 510(c). Here, in the absence of any finding of inequitable conduct on the part of the Government, the Bankruptcy Court subordinated the Government’s claim for a postpetition, noncom-pensatory tax penalty, which would normally receive first priority in bankruptcy as an “administrative expense,” §§ 503(b)(1)(C), 507(a)(1). We hold that the bankruptcy court may not equitably subordinate claims on a categorical basis in derogation of Congress’s scheme of priorities.

In April 1986, First Truck Lines, Inc., voluntarily filed for relief under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, and in the subsequent operation of its business as a debtor-in-possession incurred, but failed to discharge, tax liabilities to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). First Truck moved to convert the case to a Chapter 7 liquidation in June 1988, and in August 1988 the Bankruptcy Court granted that motion and appointed respondent Thomas R. Noland as trustee. The liquidation of the estate’s assets raised insufficient funds to pay all of the creditors.

After the conversion, the IRS filed claims for taxes, interest, and penalties that accrued after the Chapter 11 filing but before the Chapter 7 conversion, and although the parties agreed that the claims for taxes and interest were entitled to priority as administrative expenses, §§ 503(b), 507(a)(1), and 726(a)(1), they disagreed about the priority to be given tax penalties. The Bankruptcy Court determined that the penalties (like the taxes and interest) were administrative expenses under § 503(b) but held them to be subject to equitable subordination under § 510(c). In so doing, the court read that section to provide authority not only to deal with inequitable conduct on the Government’s part, but also to adjust a statutory priority of a category of claims. The Bankruptcy Court accordingly weighed the relative equities that seemed to flow from what it described as “the Code’s preference for compensating actual loss claims,” and subordinated the tax penalty claim to those of the general unsecured creditors. In re First Truck Lines, Inc., 141 B. R. 621, 629 (SD Ohio 1992). The District Court affirmed. Internal Revenue Service v. Noland, 190 B. R. 827 (SD Ohio 1993).

After reviewing the legislative history of the 1978 revision to the Bankruptcy Code and several recent appeals cases on equitable subordination of tax penalties, the Sixth Circuit affirmed, as well. In re First Truck Lines, Inc., 48 F. 3d 210 (1995). The Sixth Circuit stated that it did

“not see the fairness or the justice in permitting the Commissioner’s claim for tax penalties, which are not being assessed because of pecuniary losses to the Internal Revenue Service, to enjoy an equal or higher priority with claims based on the extension of value to the debtor, whether secured or not. Further, assessing tax penalties against the estate of a debtor no longer in existence serves no punitive purpose. Because of the nature of postpetition, nonpecuniary loss tax penalty claims in a Chapter 7 case, we believe such claims are susceptible to subordination. To hold otherwise would be to allow creditors who have supported the business during its attempt to reorganize to be penalized once that effort has failed and there is not enough to go around.” Id., at 218.

See also Burden v. United States, 917 F. 2d 115, 120 (CA3 1990); Schultz Broadway Inn v. United States, 912 F. 2d 230, 234 (CA8 1990); In re Virtual Network Services Corp., 902 F. 2d 1246, 1250 (CA7 1990). We granted certiorari to determine the appropriate scope of the power under the Bankruptcy Code (Code) to subordinate a tax penalty, 516 U. S. 1005 (1995), and we now reverse.

The judge-made doctrine of equitable subordination predates Congress’s revision of the Code in 1978. Relying in part on our earlier cases, see, e.g., Comstock v. Group of Institutional Investors, 335 U. S. 211 (1948); Pepper v. Litton, 308 U. S. 295 (1939); Taylor v. Standard Gas & Elec. Co., 306 U. S. 307 (1939), the Fifth Circuit, in its influential opinion in In re Mobile Steel Co., 563 F. 2d 692, 700 (1977), observed that the application of the doctrine was generally triggered by a showing that the creditor had engaged in “some type of inequitable conduct.” Mobile Steel discussed two further conditions relating to the application of the doctrine: that the misconduct have “resulted in injury to the creditors of the bankrupt or conferred an unfair advantage on the claimant,” and that the subordination “not be inconsistent with the provisions of the Bankruptcy Act.” Ibid. This last requirement has been read as a “reminder to the bankruptcy court that although it is a court of equity, it is not free to adjust the legally valid claim of an innocent party who asserts the claim in good faith merely because the court perceives that the result is inequitable.” DeNatale & Abram, The Doctrine of Equitable Subordination as Applied to Nonmanagement Creditors, 40 Bus. Law. 417, 428 (1985). The District Courts and Courts of Appeals have generally followed the Mobile Steel formulation, In re Baker & Getty Financial Services, Inc., 974 F. 2d 712, 717 (CA6 1992).

Although Congress included no explicit criteria for equitable subordination when it enacted § 510(c)(1), the reference in § 510(c) to “principles of equitable subordination” clearly indicates congressional intent at least to start with existing doctrine. This conclusion is confirmed both by principles of statutory construction, see Midlantic Nat. Bank v. New Jersey Dept. of Environmental Protection, 474 U. S. 494, 501 (1986) (“The normal rule of statutory construction is that if Congress intends for legislation to change the interpretation of a judicially created concept, it makes that intent specific. The Court has followed this rule with particular care in construing the scope of bankruptcy codifications”) (citation omitted), and by statements in the legislative history that Congress “intended that the term ‘principles of equitable subordination’ follow existing case law and leave to the courts development of this principle,” 124 Cong. Rec. 32398 (1978) (Rep. Edwards); see also id., at 33998 (Sen. DeConcini). In keeping with pre-1978 doctrine, many Courts of Appeals have continued to require inequitable conduct before allowing the equitable subordination of most claims, see, e. g., In re Fabricators, Inc., 926 F. 2d 1458, 1464 (CA5 1991); In re Bellanca Aircraft Corp., 850 F. 2d 1275, 1282-1283 (CA8 1988), although several have done away with the requirement when the claim in question was a tax penalty. See, e. g., Burden, supra, at 120; Schultz, supra, at 234; In re Virtual Network, supra, at 1250.

Section 510(c) may of course be applied to subordinate a tax penalty, since the Code’s requirement that a Chapter 7 trustee must distribute assets “in the order specified in . . . section 507” (which gives a first priority to administrative expense tax penalties) is subject to the qualification, “[e]xcept as provided in section 510 of this title . . . 11 U. S. C. § 726(a). Thus, “principles of equitable subordination” may allow a bankruptcy court to reorder a tax penalty in a given case. It is almost as clear that Congress meant to give courts some leeway to develop the doctrine, 124 Cong. Rec. 33998 (1978), rather than to freeze the pre-1978 law in place. The question is whether that leeway is broad enough to allow subordination at odds with the congressional ordering of priorities by category.

The answer turns on Congress’s probable intent to preserve the distinction between the relative levels of generality at which trial courts and legislatures respectively function in the normal course. Hence, the adoption in § 510(c) of “principles of equitable subordination” permits a court to make exceptions to a general rule when justified by particular facts, cf. Hecht Co. v. Bowles, 321 U. S. 321, 329 (1944) (“The essence of equity jurisdiction has been the power of the Chancellor to do equity and to mould each decree to the necessities of the particular case”). But if the provision also authorized a court to conclude on a general, categorical level that tax penalties should not be treated as administrative expenses to be paid first, it would empower a court to modify the operation of the priority statute at the same level at which Congress operated when it made its characteristically general judgment to establish the hierarchy of claims in the first place. That is, the distinction between characteristic legislative and trial court functions would simply be swept away, and the statute would delegate legislative revision, not authorize equitable exception. We find such a reading improbable in the extreme. “Decisions about the treatment of categories of claims in bankruptcy proceedings ... are not dictated or illuminated by principles of equity and do not fall within the judicial power of equitable subordination . . . .” Burden, 917 F. 2d, at 122 (Alito, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).

Just such a legislative type of decision, however, underlies the Bankruptcy Court’s reordering of priorities in question here, as approved by the District Court and the Court of Appeals. Despite language in its opinion about requiring a balancing of the equities in individual cases, the Court of Appeals actually concluded that “postpetition, nonpecuniary loss tax penalty claims” are “susceptible to subordination” by their very “nature.” 48 F. 3d, at 218. And although the court said that not every tax penalty would be equitably subordinated, ibid., that would be the inevitable result of consistent applications of the rule employed here, which depends not on individual equities but on the supposedly general unfairness of satisfying “postpetition, nonpecuniary loss tax penalty claims” before the claims of a general creditor.

The Court of Appeals’s decision thus runs directly counter to Congress’s policy judgment that a postpetition tax penalty should receive the priority of an administrative expense, 11 U. S. C. §§ 503(b)(1)(C), 507(a)(1), and 726(a)(1). This is true regardless of Noland’s argument that the Bankruptcy Court made a distinction between compensatory and noncompensa-tory tax penalties, for this was itself a categorical distinction at a legislative level of generality. Indeed, Congress recognized and employed that distinction elsewhere in the priority provisions: Congress specifically assigned 8th priority to certain compensatory tax penalties, see § 507(a)(8)(G), and 12th priority to prepetition, noncompensatory penalties, see §§ 726(a)(1) and (4).

The Sixth Circuit, to be sure, invoked a more modest authority than legislative revision when it relied on statements by the congressional leaders of the 1978 Code revisions, see 48 F. 3d, at 215, 217-218, and it is true that Representative Edwards and Senator DeConcini stated that “under existing law, a claim is generally subordinated only if [the] holder of such claim is guilty of inequitable conduct, or the claim itself is of a status susceptible to subordination, such as a penalty or a claim for damages arising from the purchase or sale of a security of the debtor.” 124 Cong. Rec. 32398 (1978) (Rep. Edwards); see also id., at 33998 (Sen. DeConcini). But their remarks were not statements of existing law and the Sixth Circuit’s reliance on the unexplained reference to subordinated penalties ran counter to this Court’s previous endorsement of priority treatment for postpetition tax penalties. See Nicholas v. United States, 384 U. S. 678, 692-695 (1966). More fundamentally, statements in legislative history cannot be read to convert statutory leeway for judicial development of a rule on particularized exceptions into delegated authority to revise statutory categorization, untethered to any obligation to preserve the coherence of substantive congressional judgments.

Given our conclusion that the Sixth Circuit’s rationale was inappropriately categorical in nature, we need not decide today whether a bankruptcy court must always find creditor misconduct before a claim may be equitably subordinated. We do hold that (in the absence of a need to reconcile conflicting congressional choices) the circumstances that prompt a court to order equitable subordination must not occur at the level of policy choice at which Congress itself operated in drafting the Code. Cf. In re Ahlswede, 516 F. 2d 784, 787 (CA9) (“[TJhe [equity] chancellor never did, and does not now, exercise unrestricted power to contradict statutory or common law when he feels a fairer result may be obtained by application of a different rule”), cert. denied sub nom. Stebbins v. Crocker Citizens Nat. Bank, 423 U. S. 913 (1975); In re Columbia Ribbon Co., 117 F. 2d 999, 1002 (CA3 1941) (court cannot “set up a subclassification of claims . . . and fix an order of priority for the sub-classes according to its theory of equity”).

In this instance, Congress could have, but did not, deny noncompensatory, postpetition tax penalties the first priority given to other administrative expenses, and bankruptcy courts may not take it upon themselves to make that categorical determination under the guise of equitable subordination. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

       Section 507(a)(1) provides, in relevant part: “(a) The following expenses and claims have priority in the following order: (1) First, administrative expenses allowed under section 503(b) of this title . . . .” Under § 503(b)(1), administrative expenses include “any tax . . . incurred by the estate” (with certain exceptions not relevant here), as well as “any fine [or] penalty ... relating to [such] a tax ...Section 726(a)(1) adopts the order of payment specified in § 507 for Chapter 7 proceedings.

       Section 510(c) provides that “the court may . . . under principles of equitable subordination, subordinate for purposes of distribution all or part of an allowed claim ....”

       Noland argues that “although the penalties at issue arose postpetition,” this claim should be viewed as a prepetition penalty because a “reorganized debtor is in many respects similar to a prepetition debtor ... [and] the conversion of [this] case to chapter 7 was tantamount to the filing of a new petition.” Brief for Respondent 16, n. 7. But we agree with the Sixth Circuit, see In re First Truck Lines, Inc., 48 F. 3d 210, 214 (1995), that the penalties at issue here are postpetition administrative expenses pursuant to 11 U. S. C. §§ 348(d), 503(b)(1). Although § 348(d) provides that a “claim against the estate or the debtor that arises after the order for relief but before conversion in a case that is converted under section 1112, 1208, or 1307 of this title, other than a claim specified in section 503(b) of this title, shall be treated for all purposes as if such claim had arisen immediately before the date of the filing of the petition,” the claim for priority here is “specified in section 503(b)” and Congress has already determined that it is not to be treated like prepetition penalties. Noland may or may not have a valid policy argument, but it is up to Congress, not this Court, to revise the determination if it so chooses.


source: Caselaw Access Project

license: Public Domain

text:
    UNITED FOOD AND COMMERCIAL WORKERS UNION LOCAL 751 v. BROWN GROUP, INC., dba BROWN SHOE CO.
    No. 95-340.
    Argued February 20, 1996
    Decided May 13, 1996

      Souter, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

      Laurence Gold argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were George Murphy, Renee L. Bowser, Marsha S. Berzon, and Jonathan P. Hiatt.

      Alan Jenkins argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging reversal. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Days, Deputy Solicitor General Kneedler, Thomas S. Williamson, Jr., Allen H. Feldman, Nathaniel I. Spiller, and Mark S. Flynn.

      Thomas C. Walsh argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Michael G. Biggers, James N. Foster, Jr., Michelle M. Cain, and Robert D. Pickle.

        Kary L. Moss filed a brief for the American Federation of Government Employees et al. as amici curiae urging reversal.

   Justice Souter

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN Act or Act), 102 Stat. 890, 29 U. S. C. §2101 et seq., obligates certain employers to give workers or their union 60 days’ notice before a plant closing or mass layoff. If an employer fails to give the notice, the employees may sue for backpay for each day of the violation, and, in the alternative, the union is ostensibly authorized to sue on their behalf. See North Star Steel Co. v. Thomas, 515 U. S. 29 (1995); Part II, infra.

Permitting a union to sue under the Act on behalf of its employee-members raises a question of standing. In Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Comm’n, 432 U. S. 333 (1977), we described a three-prong test for an association’s standing to sue based on injury to one of its members. The third element, at issue here, would bar such a suit when “the claim asserted [or] the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit.” Id., at 343. Relying on Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490 (1975), Hunt held that “individual participation” is not normally necessary when an association seeks prospective or injunctive relief for its members, but indicated that such participation would be required in an action for damages to an association’s members, thus suggesting that an association’s action for damages running solely to its members would be barred for want of the association’s standing to sue. See Hunt, supra, at 343.

The questions presented here are whether, in enacting the WARN Act, Congress intended to abrogate this otherwise applicable standing limitation so as to permit the union to sue for damages running to its workers, and, if it did, whether it had the constitutional authority to do so. We answer yes to each question.

t — I

On January 17, 1992, respondent Brown Shoe Company wrote to a representative of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, stating that Brown Shoe would shut down its Dixon, Missouri, plant and permanently lay off 277 employees beginning on March 20, 1992. App. 62-63. The complaint filed by petitioner United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 751 charged that Brown Shoe’s representations were false insofar as they are relevant here, and that in fact, even before sending the letter, Brown Shoe had begun the layoffs, which continued through February and into March. App. 8-9. The union accordingly claimed a violation of the WARN Act and sought the statutory remedy of 60-days’ backpay for each of its affected members.

The District Court dismissed the complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), saying that “when an organization seeks to recover monetary relief on behalf of its members, courts have found that such claims necessarily require participation of individual members in the suit.” 820 F. Supp. 1192, 1193-1194 (ED Mo. 1993). The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed, concluding that “[e]ach union member who wishes to recover WARN Act damages from Brown Shoe must participate in the suit so that his or her right to damages can be determined and the quantum of damages can be calculated by the court on the basis of particularized proof. Therefore, the union cannot meet the third part of the Hunt test and is precluded from asserting associational standing.” 50 F. 3d 1426, 1432 (1995). We granted certiorari, 516 U. S. 930 (1995), and now reverse.

II

At the outset, Brown Shoe argues that the WARN Act grants a union no authority to sue for damages on behalf of its members. Because the question on which we granted certiorari (whether Congress has the constitutional authority to alter the third prong of the associational standing enquiry) assumes that the WARN Act does grant the union such authority, Brown Shoe urges us to declare the writ of certiorari improvidently granted. In North Star Steel, however, we noted, contrary to Brown Shoe’s position, that “[t]he class of plaintiffs” who may sue for backpay under the WARN Act “includes aggrieved employees (or their unions, as representatives).” 515 U. S., at 31, and on further consideration we have no doubt that we were reading the statute correctly.

The key requirement of the Act is found in § 2102, which prohibits an employer from ordering “a plant closing or mass layoff until the end of a 60-day period” running from the date of the employer’s written notice of the closing or layoff “(1) to each representative of the affected employees as of the time of the notice or, if there is no such representative at that time, to each affected employee,” and “(2) to the State dislocated worker unit... and the chief elected official of the unit of local government within which such closing or layoff is to occur.” 29 U. S. C. § 2102(a). Congress defined the “representative” to which § 2102(a)(1) refers as the employees’ union, “an exclusive representative of employees within the meaning of section 9(a) or 8(f) of the National Labor Relations Act (29 U. S. C. 159(a), 158(f)) or section 2 of the Railway Labor Act (45 U. S. C. 152).” 102 Stat. 890, 29 U. S. C. § 2101(a)(4).

Enforcement of the § 2102 notice requirement is addressed in § 2104(a), the following provisions of which answer Brown Shoe’s argument. Section 2104(a)(1) makes a violating employer liable to “each aggrieved employee” for backpay and benefits for each day of the violation. Section 2104(a)(5) provides that “[a] person seeking to enforce such liability, including a representative of employees ... aggrieved under paragraph (1) . . . , may sue either for such person or for other persons similarly situated, or both, [in an appropriate district court].”

Since the union is the “representative of employees . . . aggrieved,” it is a person who may sue on behalf of the “persons similarly situated” in order to “enforce such liability.” “[S]uch liability” must refer to liability under §2104, since its remedies are exclusive. See 29 U. S. C. § 2104(b). Because the section makes no provision for liability to the union itself, any “such liability” sought by the union must (so far as concerns us here) be liability to its employee-members, so long as they can be understood to be “persons similarly situated” for the purposes of the Act. We believe they may be so understood, since each is aggrieved by the employer’s failure to give timely notice.

Brown Shoe’s alternative construction is unconvincing. It contends that a previous bill would have imposed civil liability on employers who failed to notify the union of a plant closing or mass layoff, and would have permitted the union to sue to recover a penalty where an employer failed to provide the required notice. See S. 538, 100th Cong., 1st Sess. (1987). In the ultimately enacted version of the legislation, Congress eliminated this provision, with the result that the WARN Act no longer speaks to the “rights and welfare of unions,” Brief for Respondent 12. Brown Shoe’s argument is that the class of persons “similarly situated” is the class entitled to sue for damages, so that the elimination of the union’s entitlement to a civil penalty requires the conclusion that the union is no longer “similarly situated” to “employees . . . aggrieved under paragraph (1),” and thus not permitted to sue under the Act.

The flaw in this argument is that it would force us to conclude that the provision for suits by unions is attributable only to congressional inadvertence, whereas inadvertence is not the only possible, or even plausible, explanation for the authorization. For one, the statutory reference to persons “similarly situated” can very readily be understood to mean the class of persons to whom notice is owed but not given. In this respect, the union and its members are certainly persons “similarly situated.” Brown Shoe’s argument also fails to explain why Congress would necessarily have intended to eliminate the union’s power to sue on behalf of members (as Brown Shoe assumes the union could have done prior to the amendment) just because the union was no longer entitled to a penalty in its own right. The argument for Brown Shoe’s preferred construction simply rests on one speculative possibility in opposing a straightforward reading of the provision that a union may bring suit on behalf of its members, who are “employees ... aggrieved under paragraph (1).” Speculation loses, for the more natural reading of the statute’s text, which would give effect to all of its provisions, always prevails over a mere suggestion to disregard or ignore duly enacted law as legislative oversight.

HH HH HH

This brings us to the primary question m the case: whether the union has standing to bring this action on behalf of its members. Article III of the Constitution limits the federal judicial power to “Cases” or “Controversies,” thereby entailing as an “irreducible minimum” that there be (1) an injury in fact, (2) a causal relationship between the injury and the challenged conduct, and (3) a likelihood that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision. See, e. g., Northeastern Fla. Chapter, Associated Gen. Contractors of America v. Jacksonville, 508 U. S. 656, 663 (1993); Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U. S. 464, 472 (1982). Supplementing these constitutional requirements, the prudential doctrine of standing has come to encompass “several judicially self-imposed limits on the exercise of federal jurisdiction.” See Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 751 (1984); see also Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S. 83, 97 (1968). The question here is whether a bar to the union’s suit found in the test for so-called associational standing is constitutional and absolute, or prudential and malleable by Congress.

A

The notion that an organization might have standing to assert its members’ injury has roots in NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U. S. 449, 459 (1958), where the Court noted that for the purpose of determining the scope of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP’s) rights as a litigant, the association “and its members are in every practical sense identical.” The Court accordingly permitted the NAACP to rely on violations of its members’ First Amendment associational rights in suing to bar the State of Alabama from compelling disclosure of the association’s membership lists. See also Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Comm. v. McGrath, 341 U. S. 128, 183-187 (1951) (Jackson, J., concurring); Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S. 249, 255-259 (1953); NAACP v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 428 (1963); National Motor Freight Traffic Assn., Inc. v. United States, 372 U. S. 246, 247 (1963); Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U. S. 727, 739 (1972).

The modern doctrine of associational standing, under which an organization may sue to redress its members’ injuries, even without a showing of injury to the association itself, emerges from a trilogy of cases. We first squarely recognized an organization’s standing to bring such a suit in Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490 (1975).

“The association must allege that its members, or any one of them, are suffering immediate or threatened injury as a result of the challenged action of the sort that would make out a justiciable case had the members themselves brought suit. . . . [S]o long as the nature of the claim and of the relief sought does not make the individual participation of each injured party indispensable to proper resolution of the cause, the association may be an appropriate representative of its members, entitled to invoke the court’s jurisdiction.” Id., at 511.

Worth’s requirements for associational standing were elaborated in Hunt. There we held that the Washington State Apple Advertising Commission, a state agency whose statutory charge was to promote the State’s apple industry, had standing to bring a dormant Commerce Clause challenge to a North Carolina statute forbidding the display of Washington State apple grades on apple containers. Relying on Warth, the Hunt Court stated a three-prong associational standing test:

“[W]e have recognized that an association has standing to bring suit on behalf of its members when: (a) its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right; (b) the interests it seeks to protect are germane to the organization’s purpose; and (c) neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit.” 432 U. S., at 343.

Finally, in Automobile Workers v. Brock, 477 U. S. 274 (1986), we held that a union had standing to challenge an agency’s construction of a statute providing benefits to workers who lost their jobs because of competition from imports. The union there did not allege any injury to itself, nor was it argued that the members’ associational rights were affected. Reaffirming and applying the three-part test emerging from Warth and Hunt, we held that the union had standing to bring the suit. 477 U. S., at 281-288. See also Pennell v. San Jose, 485 U. S. 1, 7, and n. 3 (1988).

B

The Court of Appeals here concluded that the union’s members would have had standing to sue on their own (the first prong), and recognized that the interests the union sought to protect were germane to its purpose (the second prong). But it denied the union’s claim of standing because it found that the relief sought by the union, damages on behalf of its members, would require the participation of individual members in the lawsuit. 50 F. 3d, at 1431. It relied on the statement in Warth that “[i]f in a proper case the association seeks a declaration, injunction, or some other form of prospective relief, it can reasonably be supposed that the remedy, if granted, will inure to the benefit of those members of the association actually injured. Indeed, in all cases in which we have expressly recognized standing in associations to represent their members, the relief sought has been of this kind.” 422 U. S., at 515. These and later precedents have been understood to preclude associational standing when an organization seeks damages on behalf of its members. See, e. g., Telecommunications Research & Action Center v. Allnet Communication Services, Inc., 806 F. 2d 1093, 1094-1095 (CADC 1986) (“[L]ower federal courts have consistently rejected association assertions of standing to seek monetary, as distinguished from injunctive or declaratory, relief on behalf of the organization’s members”) (collecting cases).

One court has suggested that this bar is of constitutional magnitude, see National Assn. of Realtors v. National Real Estate Assn., Inc., 894 F. 2d 937, 941 (CA7 1990) (“[Associations have been held to have standing under Article III of the Constitution to seek injunctive relief — but never damages”). The Court of Appeals here apparently agreed with that suggestion, and so dismissed for lack of union standing despite the WARN Act’s provision permitting the union to sue. We therefore take up the question whether the third prong of the associational standing enquiry is of constitutional character.

C

Although Warth noted that the test’s first requirement, that at least one of the organization’s members would have standing to sue on his own, is grounded on Article III as an element of “the constitutional requirement of a case or controversy,” Warth, supra, at 511, our cases have not otherwise clearly disentangled the constitutional from the prudential strands of the associational standing test. Cf. Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U. S., at 471 (“[I]t has not always been clear in the opinions of this Court whether particular features of the ‘standing’ requirement have been required by Art. Ill ex proprio vigore, or whether they are requirements that the Court itself has erected and which were not compelled by the language of the Constitution”); June, The Structure of Standing Requirements for Citizen Suits and the Scope of Congressional Power, 24 Envtl. L. 761, 793 (1994) (noting uncertainty “whether requirements such as [associational] standing are constitutional or prudential in nature”). Resort to general principles, however, leads us to say that the associational standing test’s third prong is a prudential one.

There are two ways in which Hunt addresses the Article III requirements of injury in fact, causal connection to the defendant’s conduct, and redressability. First and most obviously, it guarantees the satisfaction of these elements by requiring an organization suing as representative to include at least one member with standing to present, in his or her own right, the claim (or the type of claim) pleaded by the association. As Hunt’s most direct address to Article III standing, this first prong can only be seen as itself an Article III necessity for an association’s representative suit. Cf. Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U. S. 26, 40 (1976) (the association “can establish standing only as representatives of those of their members who have been injured in fact, and thus could have brought suit in their own right”). Hunt’s second prong is, at the least, complementary to the first, for its demand that an association plaintiff be organized for a purpose germane to the subject of its member’s claim raises an assurance that the association’s litigators will themselves have a stake in the resolution of the dispute, and thus be in a position to serve as the defendant’s natural adversary. But once an association has satisfied Hunt’s first and second prongs assuring adversarial vigor in pursuing a claim for which member Article III standing exists, it is difficult to see a constitutional necessity for anything more. See generally Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560-561 (1992). To see Hunt’s third prong as resting on less than constitutional necessity is not, of course, to rob it of its value. It may well promote adversarial intensity. It may guard against the hazard of litigating a case to the damages stage only to find the plaintiff lacking detailed records or the evidence necessary to show the harm with sufficient specificity. And it may hedge against any risk that the damages recovered by the association will fail to find their way into the pockets of the members on whose behalf injury is claimed. But these considerations are generally on point whenever one plaintiff sues for another’s injury. And although we noted in Flast that “a litigant will ordinarily not be permitted to assert the rights of absent third parties,” 392 U. S., at 99, n. 20; see also Valley Forge, supra, at 474, we recognized in Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S., at 751, that “the general prohibition on a litigant’s raising another person’s legal rights” is a “judicially self-imposed limi[t] on the exercise of federal jurisdiction,” not a constitutional mandate. Indeed, the entire doctrine of “representational standing,” of which the notion of “associational standing” is only one strand, rests on the premise that in certain circumstances, particular relationships (recognized either by common-law tradition or by statute) are sufficient to rebut the background presumption (in the statutory context, about Congress’s intent) that litigants may not assert the rights of absent third parties. Hence the third prong of the associational standing test is best seen as focusing on these matters of administrative convenience and efficiency, not on elements of a case or controversy within the meaning of the Constitution.

Circumstantial evidence of the prudential nature of this requirement is seen in the wide variety of other contexts in which a statute, federal rule, or accepted common-law practice permits one person to sue on behalf of another, even where damages are sought. “ [Representative damages litigation is common — from class actions under Fed. R. Civ. R 23(b)(3) to suits by trustees representing hundreds of creditors in bankruptcy to parens patriae actions by state governments to litigation by and against executors of decedents’ estates.” In re Oil Spill by the Amoco Cadiz off the Coast of France on Mar. 16, 1978, 954 F. 2d 1279, 1319 (CA7 1992) (per curiam). In addition, § 706(f)(1) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,42 U. S. C. § 2000e — 5(f)(1), expressly authorizes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to sue for backpay on behalf of employees who are victims of employment discrimination, General Telephone Co. of Northwest v. EEOC, 446 U. S. 318 (1980), and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 29 U. S. C. § 201 et seq., contains a comparable provision permitting the Secretary of Labor to sue for the recovery of unpaid minimum wages and overtime compensation, 29 U. S. C. § 216(c). If these provisions for representative actions were generally resulting in nonad-versarial actions that failed to resolve the claims of the individuals ultimately interested, their disservice to the core Article III requirements would be no secret. There is no reason to expect that union actions under the WARN Act portend any greater Article III incursions.

D

Because Congress authorized the union to sue for its members’ damages, and because the only impediment to that suit is a general limitation, judicially fashioned and prudentially imposed, there is no question that Congress may abrogate the impediment. As we noted in Warth, prudential limitations are rules of “judicial self-governance” that “Congress may remove ... by statute.” 422 U. S., at 509. It has done so without doubt in this instance.

* * *

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

       Because the District Court dismissed the complaint, for the purposes of deciding this appeal we assume the truth of this allegation. Nor do we reach the merits of, or any other issue about, the union’s further complaint that Brown Shoe’s letter was defective because it was sent to an individual who worked for the International. The complaint alleges that United Food Local 751, not the International or its employee, is the exclusive representative of the affected employees and is thus statutorily entitled to notice of the closing and mass layoff.

       The District Court had also denied the union’s motion to amend its complaint to add employees as plaintiffs. App. to Pet. for Cert. 18a-19a. The Court of Appeals held that the District Court’s decision in this respect did not represent an abuse of its discretion. 50 F. 3d, at 1432. The correctness of this determination is outside the scope of the questions presented here. See Pet. for Cert. i.

       102 Stat. 893, as set forth in 29 U. S. C. § 2104(a)(1):
      “Any employer who orders a plant closing or mass layoff in violation of section 2102 of this title shall be liable to each aggrieved employee who suffers an employment loss as a result of such closing or layoff for—
      “(A) back pay for each day of violation at a rate of compensation not less than the higher of—
      “(i) the average regular rate received by such employee during the last 3 years of the employee’s employment; or
      “(ii) the final regular rate received by such employee; and
      “(B) benefits under an employee benefit plan . . ., including the cost of medical expenses incurred during the employment loss which would have been covered under an employee benefit plan if the employment loss had not occurred.
      “Such liability shall be calculated for the period of the violation, up to a maximum of 60 days, but in no event for more than one-half the number of days the employee was employed by the employer.”

       The union also argues that it has standing because it suffered direct injury. The Court of Appeals held that the union lacked standing to assert its direct injury because neither backpay to the employees nor its “catch-all prayer for relief” would redress the union’s injury. 50 F. 3d 1426, 1431, n. 7 (CA8 1995). The union argues here that its injury would be redressed because an award of damages to the employees would deter future violations and would facilitate the union’s role in assisting its members. In light of our resolution of the associational standing question, we do not have occasion today to address this issue.

       United Food argues that “given the simplified nature of the monetary relief here provided,” Brief for Petitioner 44, n. 17, the third prong of the Hunt test is satisfied despite its claim for damages. In light of our conclusion that in the WARN Act Congress has abrogated the third prong of the associational standing test, we need not decide here whether, absent congressional action, the third prong would bar a “simplified” claim for damages.

       Because the union is statutorily entitled to receive notice under the WARN Act, and because of the paramount role, under federal labor law, that unions play in protecting the interests of their members, it is clear that this test is satisfied here. We therefore need not decide whether this prong is prudential in the sense that Congress may definitively declare that a particular relation is sufficient.
      The germaneness of a suit to an association’s purpose may, of course, satisfy a standing requirement without necessarily rendering the association’s representation adequate to justify giving the association’s suit pre-clusive effect as against an individual ostensibly represented. See generally Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U. S. 797 (1985); Matsushita Elec. Industrial Co. v. Epstein, 516 U. S. 367, 395-399 (1996) (Ginsburg, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). See also Automobile Workers v. Brock, 477 U. S. 274, 289 (1986) (“[A]n association might prove an inadequate representative of its members’ legal interests for a number of reasons”); Note, Associational Standing and Due Process: The Need for an Adequate Representation Scrutiny, 61 B. U. L. Rev. 174 (1981). In this case, of course, no one disputes the adequacy of the union, selected by the employees following procedures governed by a detailed body of federal law and serving as the duly authorized collective-bargaining representative of the employees, as an associational representative. See generally NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., 395 U. S. 575 (1969).

       See, e. g., Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U. S. 149 (1990) (recognizing a next-friend’s standing).

       See, e. g., Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq., and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 1060, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 201 et seq.