>You're arguing that oil & gas companies should have standing to sue over a specific mass transit policy Yes, this is trivially true. Let's say there's a mass

>You're arguing that oil & gas companies should have standing to sue over a specific mass transit policy Yes, this is trivially true. Let's say there's a mass transit policy that said that ethanol fuel would be subsidized for the next 12 months, to help out local producers. Then after the 12 months the government just simply continues to provide those subsidies. Surely someone has standing to sue here, right? Why not oil companies? etc. If that's more of an "energy policy" and less of a "mass transit" policy, then fine you can replace ethanol subsidies with high speed rail subsidies or something, though I think that gives you a less-tight analogy with the student loan subsidization scenario where you're illegally subsidizing a direct substitute for a company's product. The implicit logic that I've seen every now and then is "if the government is doing something nice for someone, then no one has standing to sue to stop it." To me that's the more obviously absurd position. If the government illegally subsidizes student loans, who has standing if not the companies that are trying to provide competing student loans? If the government illegally subsidizes ethanol, who has standing if not oil companies?