Should the Court repudiate the municipal-taxpayer exception to the general rule against taxpayer standing, and if such an exception exists, must a municipal taxpayer demonstrate a measurable cost to the municipality and direct connection to municipal taxes?

Federal and state taxpayers generally lack Article III standing to challenge government policy based solely on their status as taxpayers, even when the pol-icy is funded by tax dollars. Nevertheless, this Court’s decision in Crampton v. Zabriskie, 101 U.S. 601 (1879), discussed in Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, 486–87 (1923), has been understood to create an ex-ception for municipal taxpayers. Although many ju-rists have noted the difficulty of squaring any such exception with the Article III principles articulated in the Court’s more recent taxpayer-standing cases, the courts of appeals have uniformly declared themselves bound by the exception, while splintering over the ex-ception’s breadth. The decision below exemplifies the problem. In direct conflict with the decisions of multiple circuits, the Eighth Circuit expanded the exception, permitting a municipal taxpayer to challenge any purported misuse of municipal funds—even if the challenged policy en-sures the municipality is fully reimbursed for any ex-penditure it makes and even if the taxpayer cannot trace any challenged expenditure to municipal taxes as opposed to other revenue sources. The questions presented are: 1. Should this Court repudiate the municipal-tax payer exception to the general rule against tax-payer standing? 2. If there is a municipal-taxpayer exception to the general rule against taxpayer standing, must a municipal taxpayer challenging a municipal pol-icy at least show that the policy imposes a mea-surable cost on the municipality and that the policy necessarily implicates funds attributable to municipal taxes?