Supreme Court of the United States

“ This Court has held that the Federal Government’s authority in the field of immigration severely restricts the ability of States to enact laws or follow practices that address harms resulting from illegal immigration. See Arizona v. United States, 567 U. S. 387, 401 (2012) . If States are also barred from bringing suit even when they satisfy our established test for Article III standing, they are powerless to defend their vital interests. If a President fails or refuses to enforce the immigration laws, the States must simply bear the consequences. ”

“ Often, plaintiffs argue that everyone deserves to benefit from their effort to litigate the case and the court’s effort to decide it. Judges may think efficiency and uniformity favor the broadest possible relief. But there are serious countervailing considerations. As with universal injunctions, vacatur can stymie the orderly review of important questions, lead to forum shopping, render meaningless rules about joinder and class actions, and facilitate efforts to evade the APA’s normal rulemaking processes. ”

“ We have said that the enactment of a statute may help us to determine in marginal cases whether an injury is sufficiently concrete and particularized to satisfy the first prong of our three-part standing test. Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U. S. 330, 341 (2016) . But once it is posited that a plaintiff has personally suffered a “de facto” injury, i.e., an injury in fact, it is hard to see why the presence or absence of a statute authorizing suit has a bearing on the question whether the court has Article III jurisdiction as opposed to the question whether the plaintiff has a cause of action. ”

“ At argument, the Solicitor General was asked whether it is the position of the United States that the Constitution does not allow any party to challenge a President’s decision not to enforce laws he does not like. What would happen, the Solicitor General was asked, if a President chose not to enforce the environmental laws or the labor laws? Would the Constitution bar an injured party from bringing suit? She responded:
“That’s correct under this Court’s precedent, but the framers intended political checks in that circumstance. ”

“ But it is indisputable that we have been provided with no historical support for the position taken by the Solicitor General or the majority. *** This sweeping Executive Power endorsed by today’s decision may at first be warmly received by champions of a strong Presidential power, but if Presidents can expand their powers as far as they can manage in a test of strength with Congress, presumably Congress can cut executive power as much as it can manage by wielding the formidable weapons at its disposal. ”

“ According to those States, the Department’s new Guidelines violate federal statutes that purportedly require the Department to arrest more criminal noncitizens pending their removal.
The States essentially want the Federal Judiciary to order the Executive Branch to alter its arrest policy so as to make more arrests. But this Court has long held “that a citizen lacks standing to contest the policies of the prosecuting authority when he himself is neither prosecuted nor threatened with prosecution.” ”

“ As noted, the District Court made specific findings about the financial cost that Texas incurred as a result of DHS’s failure to assume custody of aliens covered by §§1226 (a) and (c) . And the costs that a State must bear when it is required to assume the supervision of criminal aliens who should be kept in federal custody are not only financial. Criminal aliens whom DHS unlawfully refuses to detain may be placed on state probation, parole, or supervised release, and some will commit new crimes and end up in a state jail or prison. ”

“ It’s an argument that yields more questions than answers. The parenthetical the States cite is a “curious” provision, one that “does not appear to have an analogue elsewhere in the United States Code.” Biden v. Texas, 597 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (Barrett, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 4) . Even assuming it permits this Court to award an injunction when a case comes to us on review, it does not obviously solve the States’ redressability problem. Normally, after all, a plaintiff must establish redressability from the outset of the suit. ”

“ That reality is not an anomaly—it is a constant. For the last 27 years since §1226 (c) and §1231 (a) (2) were enacted in their current form, all five Presidential administrations have determined that resource constraints necessitated prioritization in making immigration arrests.
In light of inevitable resource constraints and regularly changing public-safety and public-welfare needs, the Executive Branch must balance many factors when devising arrest and prosecution policies. That complicated balancing process in turn leaves courts without meaningful standards for assessing those policies. ”

“ You know, if—if an administration did something that extreme and said we’re just not going to enforce the law at all, then the President would be held to account by the voters, and Congress has tools at its disposal as well. ”

“ Standing is assessed plaintiff by plaintiff. The majority has no answers, and in the end, it cannot even bring itself to commit to this complete-abandonment exception. It says only that “the standing calculus might” or “arguably could” change. Ibid. (emphasis added) .
Fourth, the Court says that a plaintiff might have standing to challenge an “Executive Branch’s arrest or prosecution priorities and the Executive Branch’s provision of legal benefits or legal status ... because the challenged policy might implicate more than simply the Executive’s traditional enforcement discretion.” ”

“ The statutes, even under the States’ own reading, simply say that the Department “shall” arrest certain noncitizens. Given the “deep-rooted nature of law-enforcement discretion,” a purported statutory arrest mandate, without more, does not entitle any particular plaintiff to enforce that mandate in federal court. ”

“ Prior to today’s decision, it was established law that plaintiffs who suffer a traditional injury resulting from an agency “decision not to proceed” with an enforcement action have Article III standing. Federal Election Comm’n v. Akins, 524 U. S. 11, 19 (1998) . The obvious parallel to the case before us is Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U. S. 497 (2007) , which has been called “the most important environmental law case ever decided by the Court.” R. Lazarus, The Rule of Five: Making Climate History at the Supreme Court 1 (2020) . ”

“ What the majority has done is to apply Oliver Wendell Holmes’s bad-man theory of the law to the separation of powers. Under Holmes’s theory, as popularly understood, the law consists of those things that a bad man cannot get away with. [10] Similarly, the majority’s understanding of the “executive Power” seems to be that a President can disobey statutory commands unless Congress, by flexing its muscles, forces capitulation. That is not the Constitution’s conception of “the executive Power.” Art. ”

“ It takes an issue that entered the case on the merits and transforms it into one about standing. See ante, at 4 (opinion of Gorsuch, J.)
The Court leans, too, on principles set forth in Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U. S. 821 (1985) . Ante, at 8, 11. But, again, Heckler was not about standing. It addressed a different question: “the extent to which a decision of an administrative agency to exercise its ‘discretion’ not to undertake certain enforcement actions is subject to judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act.” ”

“ Early decisions are inconsistent with the understanding of Executive Power that appears to animate the majority. In 1806, Justice Patterson, while presiding over a criminal trial, rejected the argument that the President could authorize the defendant to violate the law. United States v. Smith, 27 F. Cas. 1192, 1201 (No. 16,342) (CC NY 1806) . He concluded:
“The president of the United States cannot control the statute, nor dispense with its execution, and still less can he authorize a person to do what the law forbids. ”

“ To establish redressability, a plaintiff must show from the outset of its suit that its injuries are capable of being remedied “ ‘by a favorable decision.’ ” Lujan, 504 U. S., at 561; see also id., at 570, n. 5 (plurality opinion) . Ordinarily, to remedy harms like those the States demonstrated in this suit, they would seek an injunction. The injunction would direct federal officials to detain aliens consistent with what the States say the immigration laws demand. But even assuming an injunction like that would redress the States’ injuries, that form of relief is not available to them. ”

“ See Brief for United States 41–42; Harrison, 37 Yale J. Reg. Bull., at 46. The anomaly dissipates, however, if we read §706 (2) as instructing courts about when they must disregard agency action in the process of deciding a case.
Imagine what else it would mean if §706 (2) really did authorize vacatur. Ordinary joinder and class-action procedures would become essentially irrelevant in administrative litigation. Why bother jumping through those hoops when a single plaintiff can secure a remedy that rules the world? ”

“ Vacatur can also sweep up nonparties who may not wish to receive the benefit of the court’s decision. Exactly that happened here. Dozens of States, counties, and cities tell us they did not seek and do not want the “benefit” of the district court’s vacatur order in this case. See Brief for New York et al. as Amici Curiae 1–2; Brief for 21 Cities, Counties, and Local Government Organizations as Amici Curiae 2–3.
More importantly still, universal relief, whether by way of injunction or vacatur, strains our separation of powers. ”

“ Third, it found that some juvenile offenders who “are not detained by ICE because of the Final Memorandum” will attend Texas public schools (and at least one juvenile due to be released will do so) . Ibid. Fourth, it concluded that the hundreds of millions of dollars that Texas annually spends on healthcare for illegal aliens would increase when some criminal aliens not detained “because of the Final Memorandum” make use of those services. ”

“ So rather than answering questions about this case, the majority’s footnote on Massachusetts raises more questions about Massachusetts itself—most importantly, has this monumental decision been quietly interred? Cf. ante, at 3 (Gorsuch, J., concurring in judgment) .
Massachusetts v. EPA is not the only relevant precedent that the Court brushes aside. “ [I] t is well established that [this Court] has an independent obligation to assure that standing exists, regardless of whether it is challenged by any of the parties.” ”

“ Matters have not improved with time. Universal injunctions continue to intrude on powers reserved for the elected branches. They continue to deprive other lower courts of the chance to weigh in on important questions before this Court has to decide them. They continue to encourage parties to engage in forum shopping and circumvent rules governing class-wide relief. ”

“ Second, even granting the broad principle the Court takes from Linda R. S., I doubt that it applies with full force in this case. Unlike the plaintiff in Linda R. S., the States do not seek the prosecution of any particular individual—or even any particular class of individuals. See ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U. S. 605, 624 (1989) (“ [F] ederal standing ‘often turns on the nature and source of the claim asserted’ ”) . In fact, they disclaim any interest in the prosecution or nonprosecution of noncitizens. ”

“ If he could, it would render the execution of the laws dependent on his will and pleasure; which is a doctrine that has not been set up, and will not meet with any supporters in our government. In this particular, the law is paramount. ”

“ II, §1, which seriously infringes the “legislative Powers” that the Constitution grants to Congress, Art. I, §1. At issue here is Congress’s authority to control immigration, and “ [t] his Court has repeatedly emphasized that ‘over no conceivable subject is the legislative power of Congress more complete than it is over’ the admission of aliens.” Fiallo v. Bell, 430 U. S. 787, 792 (1977) . In the exercise of that power, Congress passed and President Clinton signed a law that commands the detention and removal of aliens who have been convicted of certain particularly dangerous crimes. ”

“ Despite these foundational principles, in recent years a number of lower courts have asserted the authority to issue decrees that purport to define the rights and duties of sometimes millions of people who are not parties before them. ”

“ They ensure successful plaintiffs obtain meaningful relief. But they also restrain courts from altering rights and obligations more broadly in ways that would interfere with the power reserved to the people’s elected representatives. In this case, standing and remedies intersect. The States lack standing because federal courts do not have authority to redress their injuries. Section 1252 (f) (1) denies the States any coercive relief. A vacatur order under §706 (2) supplies them no effectual relief. ”

“ On that point, even though the federal courts lack Article III jurisdiction over this suit, other forums remain open for examining the Executive Branch’s arrest policies. For example, Congress possesses an array of tools to analyze and influence those policies—oversight, appropriations, the legislative process, and Senate confirmations, to name a few. Cf. Raines, 521 U. S., at 829; Lincoln, 508 U. S., at 193. And through elections, American voters can both influence Executive Branch policies and hold elected officials to account for enforcement decisions. ”