It’s (Probably Not) Complicated: The House Lacks Standing in Nagarwala

A commentator has observed that “[t]he Supreme Court’s and lower federal courts’ jurisprudence on legislative standing is complicated.” Bradford C. Mank, Does a House of Congress Have Standing Over Appropriations?: The House of Representatives Challenges the Affordable Care Act, 19 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 141, 143 (2016). Generally speaking, this is true. A series of Supreme Court decisions over the past two decades have produced mixed and often inconclusive results, which tell us something about the views of individual justices but provide little in the way of definitive answers from the Court as a whole.

We know, for example, that there are two current justices at the most liberal/permissive end of the spectrum on legislative standing. Justice Breyer would have held that individual federal legislators had standing to challenge the constitutionality of the Line Item Veto Act (he was joined in this view only by the now-retired Justice Stevens). See Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811, 838 (1997) (Breyer, J., dissenting). In subsequent cases that presented the question whether state or federal legislative bodies had institutional standing, Justice Breyer supported legislative standing in each case. See Va. House of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill, No. 18-281 (June 17, 2019) (Virginia house of delegates); Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Comm’n, 576 U.S. __ (2015) (both houses of Arizona legislature); United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013) (U.S. House of Representatives); Department of Commerce v. United States House of Representatives, 525 U.S. 316 (1999) (U.S. House).

Justice Alito has also staked out what Professor Mank calls a “novel” and “broad” approach to legislative standing. See 19 U. Pa. J. Const. L. at 183, 189. In Windsor, although a majority of the Court found it unnecessary to  resolve the question of congressional standing, Justice Alito opined that “in the narrow category of cases in which a court strikes down an Act of Congress and the Executive declines to defend the Act, Congress both has standing to defend the undefended statute and is a proper party to do so.” Similarly, in this term’s Bethune-Hill decision, Alito (writing for himself, the chief justice, and Justices Breyer and Kavanaugh) would have found that the Virginia house of delegates had standing to defend the constitutionality of a redistricting plan passed by the Virginia general assembly. The Bethune-Hill majority, however, held that the Virginia house, “as a single chamber of a bicameral legislature,” lacked standing to assert an injury (invalidation of the redistricting plan) which had been suffered by the legislature as a whole.

Which brings us to the pending motion of the U.S. House of Representatives to intervene in United States v. Nagarwala, No. 19-1015 (6th Cir.). Nagarwala involves a criminal prosecution of individuals in Michigan for practicing female genital mutilation in violation of a federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 116(a). The district court dismissed these charges on the ground that the statute exceeded Congress’s enumerated powers. The Justice Department initially filed a notice of appeal, but subsequently informed Congress pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 530D(a)(i)(B)(ii) that it lacked a reasonable basis to defend the constitutionality of the law and therefore would not pursue an appeal. The House, through the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), moved to intervene in the case to defend the constitutionality of the statute. Unlike other issues of legislative standing that may present themselves in the coming months, this one is fairly straightforward.  Continue reading “It’s (Probably Not) Complicated: The House Lacks Standing in Nagarwala”