Preview of Oral Arguments in United States v. Texas
Lyle Denniston has a preview on SCOTUSblog of the argument next week in United States v. Texas, which will be argued a week from today on April 18. Denniston nicely encapsulates the case as follows:
“The legal fight was brought on by states where Republicans dominate the governments, and where the idea of suing the national government over policy disputes has grown more and more popular. United States v. Texas is as much a part of those efforts as have been the repeated courthouse challenges to Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act), with states playing major roles in those cases, too.
“One of the curious things about the immigration case is that, to avoid its own form of gridlock (a four-to-four tie among the eight Justices), the Court might have to form a majority that actually blunts the use of state-initiated lawsuits borne of policy disputes. That is the so-called Article III question: in legal terms, do the state governments have “standing” to sue the federal government to block its actions with which they disagree legally and politically?
It is not at all unlikely that the Justices could agree that the states do lack “standing” to sue, because endorsement of that tactic might lead to a flood of state efforts to contest one federal program after another — a prospect that might be unsettling to almost all of the Justices. It is a far less divisive issue, it seems, than the other constitutional question that the Court added to its review: the president’s duty to faithfully carry out laws passed by Congress.”
KJ