Cite as: 521 U. S. 811 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
claim were sustained, it would appear that President Johnson would have had standing to challenge the Tenure of Office Act before he ever thought about firing a cabinet member, simply on the grounds that it altered the calculus by which he would nominate someone to his cabinet. Yet if the federal courts had entertained an action to adjudicate the constitutionality of the Tenure of Office Act immediately after its passage in 1867, they would have been improperly and unnecessarily plunged into the bitter political battle being waged between the President and Congress.
Succeeding Presidents—Ulysses S. Grant and Grover Cleveland—urged Congress to repeal the Tenure of Office Act, and Cleveland's plea was finally heeded in 1887. 24 Stat. 500, ch. 353. It occurred to neither of these Presidents that they might challenge the Act in an Article III court. Eventually, in a suit brought by a plaintiff with traditional Article III standing, this Court did have the opportunity to pass on the constitutionality of the provision contained in the Tenure of Office Act. A sort of mini-Tenure of Office Act covering only the Post Office Department had been enacted in 1872, 17 Stat. 284, ch. 335, § 2, and it remained on the books after the Tenure of Office Act's repeal in 1887. In the last days of the Woodrow Wilson administration, Albert Burleson, Wilson's Postmaster General, came to believe that Frank Myers, the Postmaster in Portland, Oregon, had committed fraud in the course of his official duties. When Myers refused to resign, Burleson, acting at the direction of the President, removed him. Myers sued in the Court of Claims to recover lost salary. In Myers v. United States, 272 U. S. 52 (1926), more than half a century after Johnson's impeachment, this Court held that Congress could not require senatorial consent to the removal of a Postmaster who had been appointed by the President with the consent of the Senate. Id., at 106-107, 173, 176. In the course of its opinion, the Court expressed the view that the original Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional. Id., at 176. See also id.,
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