United States v. Texas

Justice Gorsuch agreed that the States lacked standing, but located the defect in redressability rather than in the absence of a judicially cognizable injury. In his view, the District Court's factual findings showed concrete financial harm: the guidelines caused more noncitizens with criminal convictions or final removal orders to be released into the States, which increased state spending on law enforcement, incarceration, and social services.

The ordinary remedy that could redress those harms would be an injunction directing federal officials to detain noncitizens as the States believed the statutes required. But 8 U.S.C. §1252(f)(1), as interpreted in Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez, denies lower courts authority to issue broad orders requiring officials to take or refrain from taking actions under the relevant immigration provisions. Because the States could not obtain the coercive relief needed to remedy their injuries, they could not establish redressability.

Vacatur of the guidelines could not solve that problem. Even if a court could nullify the guidelines, federal officials would retain their underlying prosecutorial discretion and would not be compelled to make more arrests. Redressability depends on the effect of a court's judgment, not on the possibility that executive officials might voluntarily change course after reading the court's legal analysis.

Justice Gorsuch also questioned the premise that APA §706(2), which directs reviewing courts to “hold unlawful and set aside” improper agency action, authorizes universal vacatur. He read that language more naturally as directing courts to disregard unlawful agency action when resolving the case before them, rather than empowering them to erase agency rules for everyone everywhere.

Even if APA vacatur is available, Justice Gorsuch maintained that courts should use it only with exceptional caution. Broad relief can encourage forum shopping, bypass joinder and class-action requirements, prevent percolation in other courts, affect nonparties who do not seek relief, and improperly expand the Judiciary's role at the expense of the political branches.

Justice Barrett agreed with Justice Gorsuch that the States failed to establish redressability, and therefore that the District Court lacked jurisdiction. She did not join the Court's broader theory that the States lacked a judicially cognizable injury under Linda R. S.

In her view, Linda R. S. was fundamentally a redressability decision. The plaintiff there sought prosecution of her child's father for failure to pay child support, but prosecution would at most speculatively lead to support payments. The case therefore did not establish a broad rule that an injury arising from another person's nonprosecution is categorically outside Article III.

Justice Barrett also stressed that Texas and Louisiana did not seek prosecution of identified individuals or even of a defined class. They accepted that the Government retained discretion whether to begin removal proceedings; their claim was instead that, once the Government elected to pursue such proceedings, the statutes required temporary detention. That distinction made Linda R. S. an imperfect fit.

She warned that the majority combined doctrines that concern merits or statutory reviewability—such as executive enforcement discretion, Castle Rock's interpretation of a purported enforcement mandate, and Heckler v. Chaney's APA presumption against review of non-enforcement—into a new constitutional standing rule. In her view, the case should have been resolved on the familiar ground that the requested judicial relief was not likely to redress the States' injuries.

Justice Alito concluded that Texas had standing under the ordinary three-part test: concrete injury, traceability, and redressability. The District Court found, after trial, that DHS's policy led it to withdraw or refrain from lodging detainers against criminal noncitizens, forcing Texas to bear costs of supervision, incarceration, recidivism, education, and healthcare. Those concrete financial and sovereign harms were particular to Texas and were attributable to the guidelines.

In his view, vacating the guidelines would likely redress Texas's injuries because the District Court found that DHS personnel had rescinded detainers because of the challenged policy. He also argued that the Supreme Court itself could issue injunctive relief under the express Supreme Court exception in §1252(f)(1), and that established practice recognizes APA vacatur as an available remedy for unlawful agency action.

Justice Alito argued that Massachusetts v. EPA directly undermined the majority's new standing rule. That case allowed a State to challenge an agency's failure to use regulatory authority based on injuries indirectly caused by non-enforcement. Texas, he reasoned, had an at least equally compelling claim because the federal immigration system deprives States of much of their former sovereign authority to protect their borders while requiring them to bear the consequences of federal non-enforcement.

He maintained that Linda R. S. was a redressability case, not a source of a categorical rule barring standing whenever a plaintiff challenges non-enforcement against third parties. He further argued that Heckler v. Chaney, Castle Rock v. Gonzales, and other cases invoked by the majority concern statutory reviewability or merits, rather than Article III standing.

On the merits-related separation-of-powers question, Justice Alito rejected the suggestion that enforcement discretion permits the Executive to disregard Congress's express commands. The statutes say the Government “shall” arrest and detain covered noncitizens, and Congress enacted those mandates specifically to curb prior executive discretion. He warned that insulating such policies from judicial review lets a President effectively suspend statutory commands unless Congress can prevail through political confrontation, contrary to the Take Care Clause and the constitutional allocation of legislative and executive power.