Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811, 20 (1997)

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830

RAINES v. BYRD

Souter, J., concurring in judgment

be different if any of these circumstances were different we need not now decide.

We therefore hold that these individual members of Congress do not have a sufficient "personal stake" in this dispute and have not alleged a sufficiently concrete injury to have established Article III standing.11 The judgment of the District Court is vacated, and the case is remanded with instructions to dismiss the complaint for lack of jurisdiction.

It is so ordered.

Justice Souter, with whom Justice Ginsburg joins, concurring in the judgment.

Appellees claim that the Line Item Veto Act, Pub. L. 104- 130, 110 Stat. 1200, codified at 2 U. S. C. § 691 et seq. (1994 ed., Supp. II), is unconstitutional because it grants the President power, which Article I vests in Congress, to repeal a provision of federal law. As Justice Stevens points out, appel-lees essentially claim that, by granting the President power to repeal statutes, the Act injures them by depriving them of their official role in voting on the provisions that become law. See post, at 836-837. Under our precedents, it is fairly debatable whether this injury is sufficiently "personal" and "concrete" to satisfy the requirements of Article III.1

There is, first, difficulty in applying the rule that an injury on which standing is predicated be personal, not official. If

11 In addition, it is far from clear that this injury is "fairly traceable" to appellants, as our precedents require, since the alleged cause of appellees' injury is not appellants' exercise of legislative power but the actions of their own colleagues in Congress in passing the Act. Cf. Holtzman v. Schlesinger, 484 F. 2d 1307, 1315 (CA2 1973) ("Representative Holtzman . . . has not been denied any right to vote on [the war in Cambodia] by any action of the defendants [Executive Branch officials]. . . . The fact that her vote was ineffective was due to the contrary votes of her colleagues and not the defendants herein").

1 While Congress may, by authorizing suit for particular parties, remove any prudential standing barriers, as it has in this case, see ante, at 820, n. 3, it may not reduce the Article III minimums.

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