Reply #8: The issue is STANDING, not first amendment. [View All]

Under the US Constitution the Federal Courts can only take cases where they is a clear "Controversy" what that means is BOTH sides MUST have some sort of ACTUAL Legal conflict to litigate, it can not (at least in Theory) be a made up case. Thus to bring an action you must show YOU PERSONALLY have been harmed. If you can NOT show a PERSONAL HARM you have no STANDING to bring the action. Thus once you graduate from the Academy you are NO LONGER affected by the Academy's policies and thus have NO STANDING to bring any action (A current academy member would have standings, but from the article the only litigates were FORMER Academy Members NOT present Academy Members).

Now the courts will get around a standings problem if they want to. The best example of getting around the Standing issue was Roe vs Wade. In Roe vs Wade the Plaintiff was ruled to have standing even through the fetus she wanted to abort had gone to term. The problem is the court prefers to kick-out cases where the party has no legal standing let you have a case where one side makes BOTH sides of the Argument to make sure the side it wants is the better argument. Thus most time the courts want BOTH sides to have a personal interest in the case. Thus you must have a true controversy to have standing. That is what the Court appears to have ruled here, basically the parties who brought the action are NOT suffering from any present harm and made no complaints when they had been in the Academy, thus they have no Standing to bring an action TODAY.