The ripples from the Supreme Court’s Article III standing decision in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 141 S. Ct. 2190 (2021) are already being felt in the Second Circuit, which issued an opinion superseding a standing decision made prior to Ramirez. In Maddox v. Bank of New York Mellon Tr. Co., N.A., 19 F.4th 58 (2d Cir. 2021), the Second Circuit considered whether mortgagors had standing to pursue statutory claims based on a bank’s failure to timely record their satisfaction of their mortgages in violation of state law. The panel had previously held that the New York statutes at issue were “substantive” statutes, and mere violations of those statutes were enough to establish a concrete, intangible harm required to establish standing. But on rehearing, the same panel recognized that after Ramirez it makes no difference whether a statute is “substantive” or “procedural”; the relevant inquiry for deciding standing in the case was whether the mortgagors suffered a concrete harm because of the statutory violation. The panel determined that mortgagors had not alleged concrete harms, but recognized they could pursue their claims in state court, which is not bound by federal standing requirements.
