Common Cause has filed its opposition to the Senate’s motion to dismiss its lawsuit seeking to have the filibuster declared unconstitutional. Its brief clearly demonstrates that there is no persuasive answer, and in some cases no answer at all, to the problems identified in my earlier post on this subject. A few observations should suffice.
The nature of the alleged injury. Common Cause claims that the plaintiffs were injured by the use of the filibuster to block specific bills, namely the DISCLOSE and DREAM Acts. Yet it says that it is irrelevant whether these bills would have become law in the absence of the filibuster. Brief at 3 (“the plaintiffs need not show that both bills would have been enacted but for the filibuster to have standing.”). Merely showing that a bill benefiting them might have passed but for the filibuster demonstrates a procedural injury, it argues, and there is no need to show an actual substantive injury.
By so lowering the bar, Common Cause would create a class of standing considerably broader than taxpayer standing (which the courts have rejected). Surely every person in the United States, if not the world, can claim that they would have benefitted from a law that might have passed but for the filibuster.
At the same time, Common Cause continues to rely on the claim that the two laws in question would have been enacted but for the filibuster. Brief at 42 (DREAM Act “would have been enacted into law, but for the use of Rule XXII”); 43 (“The DREAM and DISCLOSE Acts would have been enacted but for the defendants’ use of Rule XXII.”). It thus seeks to have it both ways—to claim a substantive injury for purposes of distinguishing the plaintiffs from the world at large, while relieving itself of the burden of proving such an injury.
Continue reading “Common Cause’s Opposition to the Motion to Dismiss”