Congressional Participation in Litigation: Article III and Legislative Standing

"Houses, committees, and Members of Congress periodically seek to initiate or participate in litigation for various purposes, such as advancing their legislative objectives, challenging alleged transgressions of their legislative prerogatives, or defending core institutional interests. However, the constitutionally based doctrine of “standing” may prevent legislators from pursuing litigation in federal court. The standing doctrine requires a litigant seeking federal judicial relief to demonstrate (1) a concrete and particularized and actual or imminent injury-in-fact (2) that is traceable to the allegedly unlawful actions of the opposing party and (3) that is redressable by a favorable judicial decision. The U.S. Supreme Court and the lower federal courts have issued several important opinions analyzing whether—and under what circumstances—a legislative entity has standing to seek judicial relief.

Although legislative standing jurisprudence defies easy characterization, it is possible to distill several principles from existing precedent. For example, whereas courts commonly allow individual legislators to assert injuries to their own personal interests, following the Supreme Court’s seminal opinion in Raines v. Byrd, lower courts have generally (though not universally) been less willing to permit individual legislators to seek redress for injuries to a house of Congress as a whole, at least in the absence of explicit authorization to do so from the legislative body itself. The Supreme Court’s case Coleman v. Miller is generally understood as setting forth the lone exception, allowing legislators to sue when their vote has been “nullified” by some claimed illegal action. In addition, a congressional plaintiff generally cannot predicate a federal lawsuit solely on a complaint that the executive branch is misapplying or misinterpreting a statute. Legislative plaintiffs, like all litigants, must demonstrate concrete and particularized injury to themselves, as the Supreme Court explained in its recent decision in Virginia House of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill..."
Congressional litigation