Cite as: 521 U. S. 811 (1997)
Stevens, J., dissenting
on bills containing such separately vetoable items" and "divest[s] the[m] of their constitutional role in the repeal of legislation." Complaint ¶ 14. These two claimed injuries are at base the same as the injury on which I rest my analysis. The reason the complaint frames the issues in the way that it does is related to the Act's technical operation. Under the Act, the President would receive and sign a bill exactly as it passed both Houses, and would exercise his partial veto power only after the law had been enacted. See 2 U. S. C. § 691(a) (1994 ed., Supp. II). The appellees thus articulated their claim as a combination of the diminished effect of their initial vote and the circumvention of their right to participate in the subsequent repeal. Whether one looks at the claim from this perspective, or as a simple denial of their right to vote on the precise text that will ultimately become law, the basic nature of the injury caused by the Act is the same.
In my judgment, the deprivation of this right—essential to the legislator's office—constitutes a sufficient injury to provide every Member of Congress with standing to challenge the constitutionality of the statute. If the dilution of an individual voter's power to elect representatives provides that voter with standing—as it surely does, see, e. g., Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 204-208 (1962)—the deprivation of the right possessed by each Senator and Representative to vote for or against the precise text of any bill before it becomes law must also be a sufficient injury to create Article III standing for them.2 Although, as Justice Breyer demonstrates, see post, at 840-843 (dissenting opinion), the majority's attempt to distinguish Coleman v. Miller, 307 U. S. 433, 438 (1939), is not persuasive, I need not rely on that case to
2 The appellees' assertion of their right to vote on legislation is not simply a generalized interest in the proper administration of government, cf. Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 754 (1984), and the legislators' personal interest in the ability to exercise their constitutionally ensured power to vote on laws is certainly distinct from the interest that an individual citizen challenging the Act might assert.
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