Cite as: 576 U. S. ____ (2015)
13
Opinion of the Court
Raines.[1]
Closer to the mark is this Court’s decision in Coleman v. Miller, 307 U. S. 433 (1939). There, plaintiffs were 20 (of 40) Kansas State Senators, whose votes “would have been sufficient to defeat [a] resolution ratifying [a] proposed [federal] constitutional amendment.” Id., at 446.[2] We held they had standing to challenge, as impermissible under Article V of the Federal Constitution, the State Lieutenant Governor’s tie-breaking vote for the amend-
- ↑ Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447 (1923), featured in Justice Scalia’s dissent, post, at 4, bears little resemblance to this case. There, the Court unanimously found that Massachusetts lacked standing to sue the Secretary of the Treasury on a claim that a federal grant program exceeded Congress’ Article I powers and thus violated the Tenth Amendment. Id., at 480. If suing on its own behalf, the Court reasoned, Massachusetts’ claim involved no “quasi-sovereign rights actually invaded or threatened.” Id., at 485. As parens patriae, the Court stated: “[I]t is no part of [Massachusetts’] duty or power to enforce [its citizens’] rights in respect of their relations with the Federal Government. In that field it is the United States, and not the State, which represents them as parens patriae.” Id., at 485–486. As astutely observed, moreover: “The cases on the standing of states to sue the federal government seem to depend on the kind of claim that the state advances. The decisions … are hard to reconcile.” R. Fallon, J. Manning, D. Meltzer, & D. Shapiro, Hart and Wechsler’s The Federal Courts and the Federal System 263–266 (6th ed. 2009) (comparing Mellon with South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 308 (1966) (rejecting on the merits the claim that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 invaded reserved powers of the States to determine voter qualifications and regulate elections), Nebraska v. Wyoming, 515 U. S. 1, 20 (1995) (recognizing that Wyoming could bring suit to vindicate the State’s “quasi-sovereign” interests in the physical environment within its domain (emphasis deleted; internal quotation marks omitted)), and Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U. S. 497, 520 (2007) (maintaining that Massachusetts “is entitled to special solicitude in our standing analysis”)).
- ↑ Coleman concerned the proposed Child Labor Amendment, which provided that “Congress shall have power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age.” 307 U. S., at 435, n. 1 (internal quotation marks omitted).
