Yesterday the Fifth Circuit held oral argument in an appeal of Judge Hanen's DACA decision. You can find a write-up of the oral argument by Mohar Chatterjee at Politico. One thing jumped out at me, and I will quote the relevant line from the Politico story (the transcript is not on PACER yet). Here's a paragraph of wind-up from the story, and then the quote from Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone II:
Wednesday's arguments before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals took place just over a decade after President Barack Obama created the DACA program through executive action. Much of the roughly 45-minute argument session was devoted to whether Texas and other states suing to block the program could show enough impact on them to proceed with the court case.
"The relevant question here for summary judgment is whether… [Texas] has shown at least a dollar of expenditures that would be remedied by the removal of DACA, and whether some individual who has received that sort of spending under DACA will leave the United States," Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone II told the judges.
That's the logic of standing in a legal action for damages: if you can establish an injury, then you can proceed to the merits and the remedy. There's no principle at law by which a modest showing about standing constrains what you can get once you're through the door.
