Sen. Rand Paul’s FATCA Lawsuit Tossed For Lack Of Standing
By Jack Newsham
April 26, 2016
An Ohio federal judge tossed a lawsuit filed by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and several current and former U.S. citizens living abroad that challenged key elements of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, saying the plaintiffs hadn’t shown that the law had harmed them or probably would harm them.
Paul and nine others lack standing, U.S. District Judge Thomas Rose ruled, and they still haven’t done anything to fix the problems Judge Rose identified when he refused to issue an injunction against the law's provisions in September. The harms the parties chalk up to FATCA are either speculative or the fault of the foreign banks who rejected their business, he ruled.
Of one plaintiff, Judge Rose wrote, “discomfort with the information reporting requirements of FATCA does not establish the concrete, particularized harm that confers standing.” Similarly, he ruled, Paul’s complaint that he was unable to vote on the wide-reaching intergovernmental agreements the Treasury negotiates under FATCA “is based on a loss of political power, not a loss of any private right.”
James Bopp, an attorney who represented the plaintiffs, told Law360 on Tuesday that an appeal was “highly likely” and said the amended complaint he proposed wasn’t “futile,” as Judge Rose ruled, but addressed many of the bases for dismissal.
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