Justice Kennedy
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Jury service is an exercise of responsible citizenship by all members of the community, including those who otherwise might not have the opportunity to contribute to our civic life. Congress recognized this over a century ago in the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which made it a criminal offense to exclude persons from jury service on account of their race. See 18 U. S. C. §243. In a trilogy of cases decided soon after enactment of this prohibition, our Court confirmed the validity of the statute, as well as the broader constitutional imperative of race neutrality in jury selection. See Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303 (1880); Virginia v. Rives, 100 U. S. 313 (1880); Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339 (1880). In the many times we have confronted the issue since those cases, we have not questioned the premise that racial discrimination in the qualification or selection of jurors offends the dignity of persons and the integrity of the courts. Despite the clarity of these commands to eliminate the taint of racial discrimination in the administration of justice, allegations of bias in the jury selection process persist. In this case, petitioner alleges race discrimination in the prosecution’s use of peremptory challenges. Invoking the Equal Protection Clause and federal statutory law, and relying upon well-established principles of standing, we hold that a criminal defendant may object to race-based exclusions of jurors effected through peremptory challenges whether or not the defendant and the excluded jurors share the same race.
HH
Petitioner Larry Joe Powers, a white man, was indicted in Franklin County, Ohio, on two counts of aggravated murder and one count of attempted aggravated murder. Each count also included a separate allegation that petitioner had a firearm while committing the offense. Powers pleaded not guilty and invoked his right to a jury trial.
In the jury selection process, Powers objected when the prosecutor exercised his first peremptory challenge to remove a black venireperson. Powers requested the trial court to compel the prosecutor to explain, on the record, his reasons for excluding a black person. The trial court denied the request and excused the juror. The State proceeded to use nine more peremptory challenges, six of which removed black venirepersons from the jury. Each time the prosecution challenged a black prospective juror, Powers renewed his objections, citing our decision in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79 (1986). His objections were overruled. The record does not indicate that race was somehow implicated in the crime or the trial; nor does it reveal whether any black persons sat on petitioner’s petit jury or if any of the nine jurors petitioner excused by peremptory challenges were black persons.
The empaneled jury convicted Powers on counts of murder, aggravated murder, and attempted aggravated murder, each with the firearm specifications, and the trial court sentenced him to a term of imprisonment of 53 years to life. Powers appealed his conviction to the Ohio Court of Appeals, contending that the prosecutor’s discriminatory use of pe-remptories violated the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a fair cross section in his petit jury, the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, and Article I, §§10 and 16, of the Ohio Constitution. Powers contended that his own race was irrelevant to the right to object to the prosecution’s peremptory challenges. The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, and the Supreme Court of Ohio dismissed Powers’ appeal on the ground that it presented no substantial constitutional question.
Petitioner sought review before us, renewing his Sixth Amendment fair cross section and Fourteenth Amendment equal protection claims. While the petition for certiorari was pending, we decided Holland v. Illinois, 493 U. S. 474 (1990). In Holland it was alleged the prosecution had used its peremptory challenges to exclude from the jury members of a race other than the defendant’s. We held the Sixth Amendment did not restrict the exclusion of a racial group at the peremptory challenge stage. Five members of the Court there said a defendant might be able to make the objection on equal protection grounds. See id., at 488 (Kennedy, J., concurring); id., at 490 (Marshall, J., joined by Brennan and Blackmun, JJ., dissenting); id., at 504 (Stevens, J., dissenting). After our decision in Holland, we granted Powers’ petition for certiorari limited to the question whether, based on the Equal Protection Clause, a white defendant may object to the prosecution’s peremptory challenges of black venirepersons. 493 U. S. 1068 (1990). We now reverse and remand.
II
For over a century, this Court has been unyielding in its position that a defendant is denied equal protection of the laws when tried before a jury from which members of his or her race have been excluded by the State’s purposeful conduct. “The Equal Protection Clause guarantees the defendant that the State will not exclude members of his race from the jury venire on account of race, Strauder, [100 U. S.,] at 305, or on the false assumption that members of his race as a group are not qualified to serve as jurors, see Norris v. Alabama, 294 U. S. 587, 599 (1935); Neal v. Delaware, 103 U. S. 370, 397 (1881).” Batson, supra, at 86 (footnote omitted). Although a defendant has no right to a “petit jury composed in whole or in part of persons of [the defendant’s] own race,” Strauder, 100 U. S., at 305, he or she does have the right to be tried by a jury whose members are selected by nondiscriminatory criteria.
We confronted the use of peremptory challenges as a device to exclude jurors because of their race for the first time in Swain v. Alabama, 380 U. S. 202 (1965). Swain involved a challenge to the so-called struck jury system, a procedure designed to allow both the prosecution and the defense a maximum number of peremptory challenges. The venire in noncapital cases started with about 35 potential jurors, from which the defense and the prosecution alternated with strikes until a petit panel of 12 jurors remained. The defendant in Swain, who was himself black, alleged that the prosecutor had used the struck jury system and its numerous peremptory challenges for the purpose of excluding black persons from his petit jury. In finding that no constitutional harm was alleged, the Court in Swain sought to reconcile the command of racial neutrality in jury selection with the utility, and the tradition, of peremptory challenges. The Court declined to permit an equal protection claim premised on a pattern of jury strikes in a particular case, but acknowledged that proof of systematic exclusion of black persons through the use of peremptories over a period of time might establish an equal protection violation. Id., at 222-228.
We returned to the problem of a prosecutor’s discriminatory use of peremptory challenges in Batson v. Kentucky. There, we considered a situation similar to the one before us today, but with one exception: Batson, the defendant who complained that black persons were being excluded from his petit jury, was himself black. During the voir dire examination of the venire for Batson’s trial, the prosecutor used his peremptory challenges to strike all four black persons on the venire, resulting in a petit jury composed only of white persons. Batson’s counsel moved without success to discharge the jury before it was empaneled on the ground that the prosecutor’s removal of black venirepersons violated his rights under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. Relying upon the Equal Protection Clause alone, we overruled Swain to the extent it foreclosed objections to the discriminatory use of peremptories in the course of a specific trial. 476 U. S., at 90-93. In Batson we held that a defendant can raise an equal protection challenge to the use of peremptories at his own trial by showing that the prosecutor used them for the purpose of excluding members of the defendant’s race. Id., at 96.
The State contends that our holding in the case now before us must be limited to the circumstances prevailing in Batson and that in equal protection analysis the race of the objecting defendant constitutes a relevant precondition for a Batson challenge. Because Powers is white, the State argues, he cannot object to the exclusion of black prospective jurors. This limitation on a defendant’s right to object conforms neither with our accepted rules of standing to raise a constitutional claim nor with the substantive guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause and the policies underlying federal statutory law.
In Batson, we spoke of the harm caused when a defendant is tried by a tribunal from which members of his own race have been excluded. But we did not limit our discussion in Batson to that one aspect of the harm caused by the violation. Batson “was designed ‘to serve multiple ends,’” only one of which was to protect individual defendants from discrimination in the selection of jurors. Allen v. Hardy, 478 U. S. 255, 259 (1986) (per curiam) (quoting Brown v. Louisiana, 447 U. S. 323, 329 (1980)). Batson recognized that a prosecutor’s discriminatory use of peremptory challenges harms the excluded jurors and the community at large. 476 U. S., at 87.
The opportunity for ordinary citizens to participate in the administration of justice has long been recognized as one of the principal justifications for retaining the jury system. See Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145, 147-158 (1968). In Balzac v. Porto Rico, 258 U. S. 298 (1922), Chief Justice Taft wrote for the Court:
“The jury system postulates a conscious duty of participation in the machinery of justice. . . . One of its greatest benefits is in the security it gives the people that they, as jurors actual or possible, being part of the judicial system of the country can prevent its arbitrary use or abuse.” Id., at 310.
And, over 150 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville remarked:
“[T]he institution of the jury raises the people itself, or at least a class of citizens, to the bench of judicial authority [and] invests the people, or that class of citizens, with the direction of society.
. . The jury . . . invests each citizen with a kind of magistracy; it makes them all feel the duties which they are bound to discharge towards society; and the part which they take in the Government. By obliging men to turn their attention to affairs which are not exclusively their own, it rubs off that individual egotism which is the rust of society.
“I do not know whether the jury is useful to those who are in litigation; but I am certain it is highly beneficial to ■ those who decide the litigation; and I look upon it as one of the most efficacious means for the education of the people which society can employ.” 1 Democracy in America 334-337 (Schocken 1st ed. 1961).
Jury service preserves the democratic element of the law, as it guards the rights of the parties and ensures continued acceptance of the laws by all of the people. See Green v. United States, 356 U. S. 165, 215 (1958) (Black, J., dissenting). It “affords ordinary citizens a valuable opportunity to participate in a process of government, an experience fostering, one hopes, a respect for law.” Duncan, supra, at 187 (Harlan, J., dissenting). Indeed, with the exception of voting, for most citizens the honor and privilege of jury duty is their most significant opportunity to participate in the democratic process.
While States may prescribe relevant qualifications for their jurors, see Carter v. Jury Comm’n of Greene County, 396 U. S. 320, 332 (1970), a member of the community may not be excluded from jury service on account of his or her race. See Batson, supra, at 84; Swain, 380 U. S., at 203-204; Carter, supra, at 329-330; Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., 328 U. S. 217, 220-221 (1946); Neal v. Delaware, 103 U. S. 370, 386 (1881); Strauder, 100 U. S., at 308. “Whether jury service be deemed a right, a privilege, or a duty, the State may no more extend it to some of its citizens and deny it to others on racial grounds than it may invidiously discriminate in the offering and withholding of the elective franchise.” Carter, supra, at 330. Over a century ago, we recognized that:
“The very fact that [members of a particular race] are singled out and expressly denied ... all right to participate in the administration of the law, as jurors, because of their color, though they are citizens, and may be in other respects fully qualified, is practically a brand upon them, affixed by the law, an assertion of their inferiority, and a stimulant to that race prejudice which is an impediment to securing to individuals of the race that equal justice which the law aims to secure to all others.” Strauder, supra, at 308.
Discrimination in the jury selection process is the subject of a federal criminal prohibition, and has been since Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1876. The prohibition has been codified at 18 U. S. C. § 243, which provides:
“No citizen possessing all other qualifications which are or may be prescribed by law shall be disqualified for service as grand or petit juror in any court of the United States, or of any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude; and whoever, being an officer or other person charged with any duty in the selection or summoning of jurors, excludes or fails to summon any citizen for such cause, shall be fined not more than $6,000.”
In Peters v. Kiff, 407 U. S. 493 (1972), Justice White spoke of “the strong statutory policy of § 243, which reflects the central concern of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Id., at 507 (opinion concurring in judgment). The Court permitted a white defendant to challenge the systematic exclusion of black persons from grand and petit juries. While Peters did not produce a single majority opinion, six of the Justices agreed that racial discrimination in the jury selection process cannot be tolerated and that the race of the defendant has no relevance to his or her standing to raise the claim. See id., at 504-505 (opinion of Marshall, J.); id., at 506-507 (White, J., concurring in judgment).
Racial discrimination in the selection of jurors in the context of an individual trial violates these same prohibitions. A State “may not draw up its jury lists pursuant to neutral procedures but then resort to discrimination at ‘other stages in the selection process.’” Batson, 476 U. S., at 88 (quoting Avery v. Georgia, 345 U. S. 559, 562 (1953)). We so held in Batson, and reaffirmed that holding in Holland. See 493 U. S., at 479. In Holland, the Court held that a defendant could not rely on the Sixth Amendment to object to the exclusion of members of any distinctive group at the peremptory challenge stage. We noted that the peremptory challenge procedure has acceptance in our legal tradition. See id., at 481. On this reasoning we declined to permit an objection to the peremptory challenge of a juror on racial grounds as a Sixth Amendment matter. As the Holland Court made explicit, however, racial exclusion of prospective jurors violates the overriding command of the Equal Protection Clause, and “race-based exclusion is no more permissible at the individual petit jury stage than at the venire stage.” Id., at 479.
We hold that the Equal Protection Clause prohibits a prosecutor from using the State’s peremptory challenges to exclude otherwise qualified and unbiased persons from the petit jury solely by reason of their race, a practice that forecloses a significant opportunity to participate in civic life. An individual juror does not have a right to sit on any particular petit jury, but he or she does possess the right not to be excluded from one on account of race.
It is suggested that no particular stigma or dishonor results if a prosecutor uses the raw fact of skin color to determine the objectivity or qualifications of a juror. We do not believe a victim of the classification would endorse this view; the assumption that no stigma or dishonor attaches contravenes accepted equal protection principles. Race cannot be a proxy for determining juror bias or competence. “A person’s race simply ‘is unrelated to his fitness as a juror.’” Batson, supra, at 87 (quoting Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., supra, at 227 (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)). We may not accept as a defense to racial discrimination the very stereotype the law condemns.
We reject as well the view that race-based peremptory challenges survive equal protection scrutiny because members of all races are subject to like treatment, which is to say that white jurors are subject to the same risk of peremptory challenges based on race as are all other jurors. The suggestion that racial classifications may survive when visited upon all persons is no more authoritative today than the case which advanced the theorem, Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537 (1896). This idea has no place in our modern equal protection jurisprudence. It is axiomatic that racial classifications do not become legitimate on the assumption that all persons suffer them in equal degree. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967).
Ill
We must consider whether a criminal defendant has standing to raise the equal protection rights of a juror excluded from service in violation of these principles. In the ordinary course, a litigant must assert his or her own legal rights and interests, and cannot rest a claim to relief on the legal rights or interests of third parties. Department of Labor v. Triplett, 494 U. S. 715, 720 (1990); Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U. S. 106 (1976). This fundamental restriction on our authority admits of certain, limited exceptions. We have recognized the right of litigants to bring actions on behalf of third parties, provided three important criteria are satisfied: The litigant must have suffered an “injury in fact,” thus giving him or her a “sufficiently concrete interest” in the outcome of the issue in dispute, id., at 112; the litigant must have a close relation to the third party, id., at 113-114; and there must exist some hindrance to the third party’s ability to protect his or her own interests. Id., at 115-116. See also Craig v. Boren, 429 U. S. 190 (1976). These criteria have been satisfied in cases where we have permitted criminal defendants to challenge their convictions by raising the rights of third parties. See, e. g., Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438 (1972); Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965); see also McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420 (1961). By similar reasoning, we have permitted litigants to raise third-party rights in order to prevent possible future prosecution. See, e. g., Doe v. Bolton, 410 U. S. 179 (1973).
The discriminatory use of peremptory challenges by the prosecution causes a criminal defendant cognizable injury, and the defendant has a concrete interest in challenging the practice. See Allen v. Hardy, 478 U. S., at 259 (recognizing a defendant’s interest in “neutral jury selection procedures”). This is not because the individual jurors dismissed by the prosecution may have been predisposed to favor the defendant; if that were true, the jurors might have been excused for cause. Rather, it is because racial discrimination in the selection of jurors “casts doubt on the integrity of the judicial process,” Rose v. Mitchell, 443 U. S. 545, 556 (1979), and places the fairness of a criminal proceeding in doubt.
The jury acts as a vital check against the wrongful exercise of power by the State and its prosecutors. Batson, 476 U. S., at 86. The intrusion of racial discrimination into the jury selection process damages both the fact and the perception of this guarantee. “Jury selection is the primary means by which a court may enforce a defendant’s right to be tried by a jury free from ethnic, racial, or political prejudice, Rosales-Lopez v. United States, 451 U. S. 182, 188 (1981); Ham v. South Carolina, 409 U. S. 524 (1973); Dennis v. United States, 339 U. S. 162 (1950), or predisposition about the defendant’s culpability, Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U. S. 717 (1961).” Gomez v. United States, 490 U. S. 858, 873 (1989). Active discrimination by a prosecutor during this process condones violations of the United States Constitution within the very institution entrusted with its enforcement, and so invites cynicism respecting the jury’s neutrality and its obligation to adhere to the law. The cynicism may be aggravated if race is implicated in the trial, either in a direct way as with an alleged racial motivation of the defendant or a victim, or in some more subtle manner as by casting doubt upon the credibility or dignity of a witness, or even upon the standing or due regard of an attorney who appears in the cause.
Unlike the instances where a defendant seeks to object to the introduction of evidence obtained illegally from a third party, see, e. g., United States v. Payner, 447 U. S. 727 (1980), here petitioner alleges that the primary constitutional violation occurred during the trial itself. A prosecutor’s wrongful exclusion of a juror by a race-based peremptory challenge is a constitutional violation committed in open court at the outset of the proceedings. The overt wrong, often apparent to the entire jury panel, casts doubt over the obligation of the parties, the jury, and indeed the court to adhere to the law throughout the trial of the cause. The voir dire phase of the trial represents the “jurors’ first introduction to the substantive factual and legal issues in a case.” Gomez, supra, at 874. The influence of the voir dire process may persist through the whole course of the trial proceedings. Ibid. If the defendant has no right to object to the prosecutor’s improper exclusion of jurors, and if the trial court has no duty to make a prompt inquiry when the defendant shows, by adequate grounds, a likelihood of impropriety in the exercise of a challenge, there arise legitimate doubts that the jury has been chosen by proper means. The composition of the trier of fact itself is called in question, and the irregularity may pervade all the proceedings that follow.
The purpose of the jury system is to impress upon the criminal defendant and the community as a whole that a verdict of conviction or acquittal is given in accordance with the law by persons who are fair. The verdict will not be accepted or understood in these terms if the jury is chosen by unlawful means at the outset. Upon these considerations, we find that a criminal defendant suffers a real injury when the prosecutor excludes jurors at his or her own trial on account of race.
We noted in Singleton that in certain circumstances “the relationship between the litigant and the third party may be such that the former is fully, or very nearly, as effective a proponent of the right as the latter.” 428 U. S., at 115. Here, the relation between petitioner and the excluded jurors is as close as, if not closer than, those we have recognized to convey third-party standing in our prior cases. See, e. g., Griswold v. Connecticut, supra (Planned Parenthood official and a licensed physician can raise the constitutional rights of contraceptive users with whom they had professional relationships); Craig, supra (licensed beer vendor has standing to raise the equal protection claim of a male customer challenging a statutory scheme prohibiting the sale of beer to males under the age of 21 and to females under the age of 18); Department of Labor v. Triplett, 494 U. S. 715 (1990) (attorney may challenge an attorney’s fees restriction by asserting the due process rights of the client). Voir dire permits a party to establish a relation, if not a bond of trust, with the jurors. This relation continues throughout the entire trial and may in some cases extend to the sentencing as well.
Both the excluded juror and the criminal defendant have a common interest in eliminating racial discrimination from the courtroom. A venireperson excluded from jury service because of race suffers a profound personal humiliation heightened by its public character. The rejected juror may lose confidence in the court and its verdicts, as may the defendant if his or her objections cannot be heard. This congruence of interests makes it necessary and appropriate for the defendant to raise the rights of the juror. And, there can be no doubt that petitioner will be a motivated, effective advocate for the excluded venirepersons’ rights. Petitioner has much at stake in proving that his jury was improperly constituted due to an equal protection violation, for we have recognized that discrimination in the jury selection process may lead to the reversal of a conviction. See Batson, 476 U. S., at 100; Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S. 254, 264 (1986); Rose v. Mitchell, 443 U. S., at 551; Cassell v. Texas, 339 U. S. 282 (1950). Thus, “‘there seems little loss in terms of effective advocacy from allowing [the assertion of this claim] by’ the presentas tertii champion.” Craig, 429 U. S., at 194 (quoting Singleton, supra, at 118).
The final inquiry in our third-party standing analysis involves the likelihood and ability of the third parties, the excluded venirepersons, to assert their own rights. See Singleton, supra, at 115-116. We have held that individual jurors subjected to racial exclusion have the legal right to bring suit on their own behalf. Carter, 396 U. S., at 329-330. As a practical matter, however, these challenges are rare. See Alschuler, The Supreme Court and the Jury: Voir Dire, Peremptory Challenges, and the Review of Jury Verdicts, 56 U. Chi. L. Rev. 153, 193-195 (1989). Indeed, it took nearly a century after the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 came into being for the first such case to reach this Court. See Carter, supra, at 320.
The barriers to a suit by an excluded juror are daunting. Potential jurors are not parties to the jury selection process and have no opportunity to be heard at the time of their exclusion. Nor can excluded jurors easily obtain declaratory or injunctive relief when discrimination occurs through an individual prosecutor’s exercise of peremptory challenges. Unlike a challenge to systematic practices of the jury clerk and commissioners such as we considered in Carter, it would be difficult for an individual juror to show a likelihood that discrimination against him at the voir dire stage will recur. See Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 105-110 (1983). And, there exist considerable practical barriers to suit by the excluded juror because of the small financial stake involved and the economic burdens of litigation. See Vasquez, supra, at 262, n. 5; Rose v. Mitchell, supra, at 558. The reality is that a juror dismissed because of race probably will leave the courtroom possessing little incentive to set in motion the arduous process needed to vindicate his own rights. See Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S. 249, 257 (1953).
We conclude that a defendant in a criminal case can raise the third-party equal protection claims of jurors excluded by the prosecution because of their race. In so doing, we once again decline “to reverse a course of decisions of long standing directed against racial discrimination in the administration of justice.” Cassell v. Texas, supra, at 290 (Frankfurter, J., concurring in judgment). To bar petitioner’s claim because his race differs from that of the excluded jurors would be to condone the arbitrary exclusion of citizens from the duty, honor, and privilege of jury service. In Holland and Batson, we spoke of the significant role peremptory challenges play in our trial procedures, but we noted also that the utility of the peremptory challenge system must be accommodated to the command of racial neutrality. Holland, 493 U. S., at 486-487; Batson, supra, at 98-99.
The Fourteenth Amendment’s mandate that race discrimination be eliminated from all official acts and proceedings of the State is most compelling in the judicial system. Rose v. Mitchell, supra, at 555. We have held, for example, that prosecutorial discretion cannot be exercised on the basis of race, Wayte v. United States, 470 U. S. 598, 608 (1985), and that, where racial bias is likely to influence a jury, an inquiry must be made into such bias. Ristaino v. Ross, 424 U. S. 589, 596 (1976); see also Turner v. Murray, 476 U. S. 28 (1986). The statutory prohibition on discrimination in the selection of jurors, 18 U. S. C. § 243, enacted pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment’s Enabling Clause, makes race neutrality in jury selection a visible, and inevitable, measure of the judicial system’s own commitment to the commands of the Constitution. The courts are under an affirmative duty to enforce the strong statutory and constitutional policies embodied in that prohibition. See Peters v. Kiff, 407 U. S., at 507 (White, J., concurring in judgment); see also id., at 505 (opinion of Marshall, J.).
The emphasis in Batson on racial identity between the defendant and the excused prospective juror is not inconsistent with our holding today that race is irrelevant to a defendant’s standing to object to the discriminatory use of peremptory challenges. Racial identity between the defendant and the excused person might in some cases be the explanation for the prosecution’s adoption of the forbidden stereotype, and if the alleged race bias takes this form, it may provide one of the easier cases to establish both a prima facie case and a conclusive showing that wrongful discrimination has occurred. But to say that the race of the defendant may be relevant to discerning bias in some cases does not mean that it will be a factor in others, for race prejudice, stems from various causes and may manifest itself in different forms.
It remains for the trial courts to develop rules, without unnecessary disruption of the jury selection process, to permit legitimate and well-founded objections to the use of peremptory challenges as a mask for race prejudice. In this case, the State concedes that, if we find the petitioner has standing to object to the prosecution’s use of the peremptory challenges, the case should be remanded. We find that petitioner does have standing. The judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with our opinion.
It is so ordered.