Appellant
Frederick D. Raines, Director, U.S. Office of Management and Budget, et al.
Appellee
Senator Robert Byrd, et al.
Appellant's Claim
That appellees lacked standing to challenge the recently passed Line Item Veto Act.
Chief Lawyer for Appellant
Walter E. Dellinger, U.S. Solicitor General
Chief Lawyer for Appellee
Alan Morrison
Justices for the Court
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, William H. Rehnquist (writing for the Court), Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, Clarence Thomas
Justices Dissenting
Stephen Breyer, John Paul Stevens
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
26 June 1997
Decision
That the appellees lacked standing for their case under Article III, sectionII, of the Constitution, which authorizes the judicial branch to review only"cases" and "controversies." Since appellees could not "allege a personal injury that is particularized, concrete, and otherwise judicially cognizable," the case had to be vacated.
Significance
By the time Raines v. Byrd came before the Supreme Court, President Bill Clinton had used the line item veto to strike $2 billion from the annual budget. Many have hoped that the Line Item Veto would prove an effective weapon against "pork barrel spending," appropriations of money by legislators withthe purpose of benefiting their districts, states, or favorite interest groups. The actual presidential authority granted by the act, however, was not aslarge as it seemed on first glance. By not ruling on the constitutionality of the act itself, the Court left that question open for another case.
Political Ironies
The line-item veto case involved political ironies. Usually Republicans and conservatives have been associated with spending cuts in general, and line-item veto proposals in particular, and indeed a Republican, Senator Dan Coats ofIndiana, authored the legislation that would become the Line Item Veto Act.Yet President Bill Clinton, as a member of the executive branch if not as a Democrat, favored the veto as well. Thus the legal action in Raines v. Byrd pitted five Democrats--Senators Robert Byrd, Carl Levin, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Representatives David Skaggs and Henry Waxman--along with liberal Republican Mark Hatfield, against a Democratic administration. President Clinton, in spite of differences with Republicans in the legislative branch, found that he had their support to veto spending proposals emanating fromeither House of (the Republican-dominated) Congress.
When the Republicans, for the first time in 40 years, regained a majority inboth Houses during the 1994 elections, they did so with a promise of sweepingreforms embodied in a set of proposals called the "Contract with America." Of these, the line-item veto was the only one that enjoyed the president's support. On 27 March 1996, the Senate approved the Line Item Veto Bill by a 69-31 vote, in which four of the appellee Senators in Raines voted "nay".The following day, the House voted on its own Line Item Bill, which it passedby a vote of 232-177--again without the support of the two representatives who later became involved in the Raines legal action. On 29 March, thesix appellees filed a complaint with the District Court for the District of Columbia, naming in their suit the secretary of the treasury and the directorof the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
A later USA Today article suggested why those two officers, particularly the OMB director, would be named in the suit: his staff had the job of scouring legislation to find suspected pork-barrel projects for the president'sveto. "We have numbers of projects in bills where the only thing we know about them is the title," OMB Director Franklin Raines told the paper. "There's nothing in the record, nothing in the report, nothing in the bill that tells you what it is." The reason for such mystery is that if the purpose of a measure is unknown, it is not likely to be challenged--at least, such was the caseuntil the passage of the Line Item Veto Act. "Some powerful lawmakers bury their projects deep in the legislation in hopes of avoiding scrutiny," Susan Page reported; therefore, "budget officials end up calling staffers on congressional subcommittees for clues or tracking down aides to the members of Congress suspected of being the likely sponsors. The last weapon is the threat that a mystery item may be vetoed if it can't be explained."
The legislators who brought the legal action known as Raines v. Byrd--designated as "appellees" by the Supreme Court because they were by the timethe case reached the nation's highest bench--charged that the veto "unconstitutionally expands the President's power." They further charged that the act "violates the requirements of bicameral passage [i.e., by both houses] . . . by granting to the President, acting alone, the authority to `cancel' and thusrepeal provisions of federal law." The act provided that members of Congress"or any individual adversely affected by [this act] may bring an action, inthe U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, for declaratory judgment and injunctive relief on the ground that any provision of this part violates the Constitution." Therefore, the legislators did just that. In their suit,they held that the act "directly and concretely" affected them in three ways: by altering "the legal and practical effect of all votes they may cast on bills containing such separately vetoable items"; by taking from them their "constitutional role in the repeal of legislation"; and by changing the constitutionally fixed balance of power between the executive and legislative branches.
The OMB Director and other appellants moved to have the case dismissed, holding that the appellees lacked standing to sue, and further charging that theircase was not "ripe" because sufficient time had not passed since the act's introduction into law. On 10 April 1997, the district court denied this motion, ruling that the legislators had standing, and that their claim was ripe. The court further granted the appellees' summary judgment motion, holding thatthe act diluted their voting power as members of the legislative branch underArticle I of the Constitution, and further holding that the case had standing under Article III.
Embodied in the act was a direct appeal to the Supreme Court to adjudicate any suit challenging its constitutionality. Therefore on 18 April, eight days after the district court's ruling, the appellants filed a statement with the High Court asking it to note probable jurisdiction. On 21 April, the appelleesfiled a memorandum in response, agreeing with the appellants' jurisdiction request. The Court duly noted probable jurisdiction, and in effect "moved thecase to the top of the pile" on the basis of the constitutional questions involved.
Not a "Case" or "Controversy"
By a 7-2 majority, the Court ruled that the appellees lacked standing to sue.Chief Justice Rehnquist, who delivered the Court's opinion, noted that Article III, section 2 of the Constitution enumerates the types of "cases and controversies" which federal courts have power to decide. These include disagreements between citizens, a citizen and a state, a state and the federal government, and so on. In order to be judged as "having standing," the appellees would have to show, in the chief justice's words, "a personal injury that is particularized, concrete, and otherwise judicially cognizable." In other words,a person bringing a suit has to point to a specific law that the accused hasviolated, and to show how that action has affected the plaintiff. The Court had always been strict on issues of judicial standing, the chief justice noted, particularly in instances where the dispute involved two branches of the federal government.
As for the question of legislative standing--that is, the standing of appellees to sue as members of Congress--this was a question on which "This Court has never had occasion to rule . . . " The appellees had tried to cite Powell v. McCormack (1969), which involved the exclusion of Representative Adam Clayton Powell from his congressional seat due to allegations of financialwrongdoing, but the Court found that Powell was no guide. The appellees could not claim, as Powell had, that they had been "singled out for specially unfavorable treatment as opposed to other members of their respective bodies." Rather, they were claiming that the act caused "a type of institutionalinjury which damages all Members of Congress equally." Furthermore, that injury was really a loss of political power in their offices, as opposed to the loss of something to which they were personally entitled.
Nor did the appellees find much help in Coleman v. Miller (1939), theonly case in which the Court had upheld standing for legislators who claimedan institutional injury--i.e., something that affected an entire legislativebody. In that instance, a state legislature had been locked in a tie vote onratification of an amendment to the federal Constitution, and the state's lieutenant governor had broken the tie by casting the deciding vote. The legislators in Coleman had "a plain, direct and adequate interest in maintaining the effectiveness of their votes," whereas the appellees in the present case could not point to a single bill that had been defeated because of the Line Item Veto. They had been given a chance to vote against the act when it was under debate, had done so--and had lost, fair and square. "To uphold standing here would require a drastic extension of Coleman," the chief justice wrote, " . . . for there is a vast difference between the level of vote nullification at issue in Coleman and the abstract dilution of institutional power appellees allege." The legislators in Coleman could point to a specific measure that had failed because of the lieutenant governor's intervention; those in the present case, however, could only make vague references to possible violations of constitutional principle.
Throughout the nation's history, there had been numerous situations in whichone member or another of the executive or legislative branches had cause to challenge a measure on the basis of "claimed injury to official authority or power." The Court cited, for instance, the Tenure of Office Act of 1867, The Pocket Veto case of 1929, and the Federal Election Campaign Act struck down inBuckley v. Valeo (1976). Again and again, there had been such instances, in which the parties involved had at least as much standing as those in the present case, but they had not initiated legal action. This was a fortunate thing, because the Constitution provided a limited role for courts, which the framers never intended as arenas in which to decide every possible disagreement.
The proper place to decide the present disagreement, the Court concluded, waswhere it had begun: in Congress. Whereas the appellees had not been authorized by their respective Houses to take the present legal action--"indeed, bothHouses actively oppose their suit"--they did have voting power as members ofthe legislative branch. As such, they possessed the potential to either repeal the act or at least to exempt bills from its reach (as they could do simply by adding such a proviso in the bill itself, as the Post had observed.) Finally, the Court's ruling did not prevent someone with genuine standingto challenge the act--a statement which paved the way for a later line-itemveto challenge.
Counter-Arguments in the Constitution and Coleman
Justice Souter, joined by Justice Ginsburg, concurred in the judgment. He took issue merely with the Court's ruling that the injury claimed was not appropriately "personal" and "concrete" to fulfill Article III requirements. Firstof all, there were problems with the requirement than an injury was to be deemed "personal" and not official in nature, and Justice Souter held that "theofficial nature of the harm here does not preclude standing." Second, he didnot hold that the injuries claimed were so general that they could be deemedas lacking the sufficient degree of concreteness. Nonetheless, "a suit challenging the constitutionality of this Act brought by a party from outside the Federal government . . . would expose the Judicial Branch to a lesser risk" than would the present one, which required it to judge between two other branches of the federal government. "The virtue of waiting for a private suit," Justice Souter wrote, "is only confirmed by the certainty that another suit cancome to us." Again, a member of the Court helped pave the way for a challenge.
Justice Stevens, in a dissenting opinion, held that the Line Item Veto was indeed unconstitutional because it forced members of the legislative branch tovote on "truncated" or abbreviated bills. Furthermore, senators and representatives would have no power to vote against the abbreviated bill "that survives the President's cancellation authority." Under Article I, section 7 of theConstitution, members of the legislative branch are granted the power to voteon "Every bill . . . before it become a law," whereas under the Line Item Veto Act, they would be deprived of such a right. "In my judgment," Justice Stevens wrote, "the deprivation of this right--essential to the legislator's office--constitutes a sufficient injury to provide every Member of Congress withstanding to challenge the constitutionality of the statute."
Justice Breyer also dissented, holding that the issue at hand was "a case orcontroversy." Justice Felix Frankfurter in Coleman had held that the courts traditionally "leave intra-parliamentary controversies to parliaments and outside the scrutiny of law courts," but the present case presented different circumstances. (And, Justice Breyer noted, Justice Frankfurter's opinionwas a dissenting one.) The present case, Justice Breyer held, was at least asstrong as Coleman, and he noted that the Constitution "does not drawan absolute line between disputes involving a `personal' harm and those involving an `official' harm." Taking further issue with the Court's reading of Coleman, Justice Breyer observed that like the legislators in the earlier case, the members of Congress in the present one "will likely vote in the majority for at least some appropriations bills that are then subject to presidential cancellation . . . " Therefore their votes "are threatened with nullification too," and on the basis of Coleman, Justice Breyer ruled thatthe appellees did indeed have standing.
Impact
In the aftermath of Raines, responses were drawn on predictable lines.Coats, the act's author, called the ruling "a victory for common sense and fiscal integrity." Moynihan, one of the appellees, suggested that a future case would result in the act being ruled unconstitutional. On 31 October 1997, several months after the decision, Susan Page of USA Today assessed itsimpact in an article entitled "Line-Item Veto Alters Political Landscape." The veto, Page wrote, "has changed the budgetary balance of power, giving thepresident the final say over small projects that legislators often see as essential to their districts' livelihood or their own political future." The predicted challenge to the act soon came, with Clinton v. City of New York (1998). This time the litigants were a diverse group including several NewYork hospitals and a group of potato-growers' from Idaho, and the case namedthe president himself. U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan struck down the line-item veto in February of 1998, and the Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional on 27 April.
Related Cases
Frederick D. Raines, Director, U.S. Office of Management and Budget, et al.
Appellee
Senator Robert Byrd, et al.
Appellant's Claim
That appellees lacked standing to challenge the recently passed Line Item Veto Act.
Chief Lawyer for Appellant
Walter E. Dellinger, U.S. Solicitor General
Chief Lawyer for Appellee
Alan Morrison
Justices for the Court
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, William H. Rehnquist (writing for the Court), Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, Clarence Thomas
Justices Dissenting
Stephen Breyer, John Paul Stevens
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
26 June 1997
Decision
That the appellees lacked standing for their case under Article III, sectionII, of the Constitution, which authorizes the judicial branch to review only"cases" and "controversies." Since appellees could not "allege a personal injury that is particularized, concrete, and otherwise judicially cognizable," the case had to be vacated.
Significance
By the time Raines v. Byrd came before the Supreme Court, President Bill Clinton had used the line item veto to strike $2 billion from the annual budget. Many have hoped that the Line Item Veto would prove an effective weapon against "pork barrel spending," appropriations of money by legislators withthe purpose of benefiting their districts, states, or favorite interest groups. The actual presidential authority granted by the act, however, was not aslarge as it seemed on first glance. By not ruling on the constitutionality of the act itself, the Court left that question open for another case.
Political Ironies
The line-item veto case involved political ironies. Usually Republicans and conservatives have been associated with spending cuts in general, and line-item veto proposals in particular, and indeed a Republican, Senator Dan Coats ofIndiana, authored the legislation that would become the Line Item Veto Act.Yet President Bill Clinton, as a member of the executive branch if not as a Democrat, favored the veto as well. Thus the legal action in Raines v. Byrd pitted five Democrats--Senators Robert Byrd, Carl Levin, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Representatives David Skaggs and Henry Waxman--along with liberal Republican Mark Hatfield, against a Democratic administration. President Clinton, in spite of differences with Republicans in the legislative branch, found that he had their support to veto spending proposals emanating fromeither House of (the Republican-dominated) Congress.
When the Republicans, for the first time in 40 years, regained a majority inboth Houses during the 1994 elections, they did so with a promise of sweepingreforms embodied in a set of proposals called the "Contract with America." Of these, the line-item veto was the only one that enjoyed the president's support. On 27 March 1996, the Senate approved the Line Item Veto Bill by a 69-31 vote, in which four of the appellee Senators in Raines voted "nay".The following day, the House voted on its own Line Item Bill, which it passedby a vote of 232-177--again without the support of the two representatives who later became involved in the Raines legal action. On 29 March, thesix appellees filed a complaint with the District Court for the District of Columbia, naming in their suit the secretary of the treasury and the directorof the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
A later USA Today article suggested why those two officers, particularly the OMB director, would be named in the suit: his staff had the job of scouring legislation to find suspected pork-barrel projects for the president'sveto. "We have numbers of projects in bills where the only thing we know about them is the title," OMB Director Franklin Raines told the paper. "There's nothing in the record, nothing in the report, nothing in the bill that tells you what it is." The reason for such mystery is that if the purpose of a measure is unknown, it is not likely to be challenged--at least, such was the caseuntil the passage of the Line Item Veto Act. "Some powerful lawmakers bury their projects deep in the legislation in hopes of avoiding scrutiny," Susan Page reported; therefore, "budget officials end up calling staffers on congressional subcommittees for clues or tracking down aides to the members of Congress suspected of being the likely sponsors. The last weapon is the threat that a mystery item may be vetoed if it can't be explained."
The legislators who brought the legal action known as Raines v. Byrd--designated as "appellees" by the Supreme Court because they were by the timethe case reached the nation's highest bench--charged that the veto "unconstitutionally expands the President's power." They further charged that the act "violates the requirements of bicameral passage [i.e., by both houses] . . . by granting to the President, acting alone, the authority to `cancel' and thusrepeal provisions of federal law." The act provided that members of Congress"or any individual adversely affected by [this act] may bring an action, inthe U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, for declaratory judgment and injunctive relief on the ground that any provision of this part violates the Constitution." Therefore, the legislators did just that. In their suit,they held that the act "directly and concretely" affected them in three ways: by altering "the legal and practical effect of all votes they may cast on bills containing such separately vetoable items"; by taking from them their "constitutional role in the repeal of legislation"; and by changing the constitutionally fixed balance of power between the executive and legislative branches.
The OMB Director and other appellants moved to have the case dismissed, holding that the appellees lacked standing to sue, and further charging that theircase was not "ripe" because sufficient time had not passed since the act's introduction into law. On 10 April 1997, the district court denied this motion, ruling that the legislators had standing, and that their claim was ripe. The court further granted the appellees' summary judgment motion, holding thatthe act diluted their voting power as members of the legislative branch underArticle I of the Constitution, and further holding that the case had standing under Article III.
Embodied in the act was a direct appeal to the Supreme Court to adjudicate any suit challenging its constitutionality. Therefore on 18 April, eight days after the district court's ruling, the appellants filed a statement with the High Court asking it to note probable jurisdiction. On 21 April, the appelleesfiled a memorandum in response, agreeing with the appellants' jurisdiction request. The Court duly noted probable jurisdiction, and in effect "moved thecase to the top of the pile" on the basis of the constitutional questions involved.
Not a "Case" or "Controversy"
By a 7-2 majority, the Court ruled that the appellees lacked standing to sue.Chief Justice Rehnquist, who delivered the Court's opinion, noted that Article III, section 2 of the Constitution enumerates the types of "cases and controversies" which federal courts have power to decide. These include disagreements between citizens, a citizen and a state, a state and the federal government, and so on. In order to be judged as "having standing," the appellees would have to show, in the chief justice's words, "a personal injury that is particularized, concrete, and otherwise judicially cognizable." In other words,a person bringing a suit has to point to a specific law that the accused hasviolated, and to show how that action has affected the plaintiff. The Court had always been strict on issues of judicial standing, the chief justice noted, particularly in instances where the dispute involved two branches of the federal government.
As for the question of legislative standing--that is, the standing of appellees to sue as members of Congress--this was a question on which "This Court has never had occasion to rule . . . " The appellees had tried to cite Powell v. McCormack (1969), which involved the exclusion of Representative Adam Clayton Powell from his congressional seat due to allegations of financialwrongdoing, but the Court found that Powell was no guide. The appellees could not claim, as Powell had, that they had been "singled out for specially unfavorable treatment as opposed to other members of their respective bodies." Rather, they were claiming that the act caused "a type of institutionalinjury which damages all Members of Congress equally." Furthermore, that injury was really a loss of political power in their offices, as opposed to the loss of something to which they were personally entitled.
Nor did the appellees find much help in Coleman v. Miller (1939), theonly case in which the Court had upheld standing for legislators who claimedan institutional injury--i.e., something that affected an entire legislativebody. In that instance, a state legislature had been locked in a tie vote onratification of an amendment to the federal Constitution, and the state's lieutenant governor had broken the tie by casting the deciding vote. The legislators in Coleman had "a plain, direct and adequate interest in maintaining the effectiveness of their votes," whereas the appellees in the present case could not point to a single bill that had been defeated because of the Line Item Veto. They had been given a chance to vote against the act when it was under debate, had done so--and had lost, fair and square. "To uphold standing here would require a drastic extension of Coleman," the chief justice wrote, " . . . for there is a vast difference between the level of vote nullification at issue in Coleman and the abstract dilution of institutional power appellees allege." The legislators in Coleman could point to a specific measure that had failed because of the lieutenant governor's intervention; those in the present case, however, could only make vague references to possible violations of constitutional principle.
Throughout the nation's history, there had been numerous situations in whichone member or another of the executive or legislative branches had cause to challenge a measure on the basis of "claimed injury to official authority or power." The Court cited, for instance, the Tenure of Office Act of 1867, The Pocket Veto case of 1929, and the Federal Election Campaign Act struck down inBuckley v. Valeo (1976). Again and again, there had been such instances, in which the parties involved had at least as much standing as those in the present case, but they had not initiated legal action. This was a fortunate thing, because the Constitution provided a limited role for courts, which the framers never intended as arenas in which to decide every possible disagreement.
The proper place to decide the present disagreement, the Court concluded, waswhere it had begun: in Congress. Whereas the appellees had not been authorized by their respective Houses to take the present legal action--"indeed, bothHouses actively oppose their suit"--they did have voting power as members ofthe legislative branch. As such, they possessed the potential to either repeal the act or at least to exempt bills from its reach (as they could do simply by adding such a proviso in the bill itself, as the Post had observed.) Finally, the Court's ruling did not prevent someone with genuine standingto challenge the act--a statement which paved the way for a later line-itemveto challenge.
Counter-Arguments in the Constitution and Coleman
Justice Souter, joined by Justice Ginsburg, concurred in the judgment. He took issue merely with the Court's ruling that the injury claimed was not appropriately "personal" and "concrete" to fulfill Article III requirements. Firstof all, there were problems with the requirement than an injury was to be deemed "personal" and not official in nature, and Justice Souter held that "theofficial nature of the harm here does not preclude standing." Second, he didnot hold that the injuries claimed were so general that they could be deemedas lacking the sufficient degree of concreteness. Nonetheless, "a suit challenging the constitutionality of this Act brought by a party from outside the Federal government . . . would expose the Judicial Branch to a lesser risk" than would the present one, which required it to judge between two other branches of the federal government. "The virtue of waiting for a private suit," Justice Souter wrote, "is only confirmed by the certainty that another suit cancome to us." Again, a member of the Court helped pave the way for a challenge.
Justice Stevens, in a dissenting opinion, held that the Line Item Veto was indeed unconstitutional because it forced members of the legislative branch tovote on "truncated" or abbreviated bills. Furthermore, senators and representatives would have no power to vote against the abbreviated bill "that survives the President's cancellation authority." Under Article I, section 7 of theConstitution, members of the legislative branch are granted the power to voteon "Every bill . . . before it become a law," whereas under the Line Item Veto Act, they would be deprived of such a right. "In my judgment," Justice Stevens wrote, "the deprivation of this right--essential to the legislator's office--constitutes a sufficient injury to provide every Member of Congress withstanding to challenge the constitutionality of the statute."
Justice Breyer also dissented, holding that the issue at hand was "a case orcontroversy." Justice Felix Frankfurter in Coleman had held that the courts traditionally "leave intra-parliamentary controversies to parliaments and outside the scrutiny of law courts," but the present case presented different circumstances. (And, Justice Breyer noted, Justice Frankfurter's opinionwas a dissenting one.) The present case, Justice Breyer held, was at least asstrong as Coleman, and he noted that the Constitution "does not drawan absolute line between disputes involving a `personal' harm and those involving an `official' harm." Taking further issue with the Court's reading of Coleman, Justice Breyer observed that like the legislators in the earlier case, the members of Congress in the present one "will likely vote in the majority for at least some appropriations bills that are then subject to presidential cancellation . . . " Therefore their votes "are threatened with nullification too," and on the basis of Coleman, Justice Breyer ruled thatthe appellees did indeed have standing.
Impact
In the aftermath of Raines, responses were drawn on predictable lines.Coats, the act's author, called the ruling "a victory for common sense and fiscal integrity." Moynihan, one of the appellees, suggested that a future case would result in the act being ruled unconstitutional. On 31 October 1997, several months after the decision, Susan Page of USA Today assessed itsimpact in an article entitled "Line-Item Veto Alters Political Landscape." The veto, Page wrote, "has changed the budgetary balance of power, giving thepresident the final say over small projects that legislators often see as essential to their districts' livelihood or their own political future." The predicted challenge to the act soon came, with Clinton v. City of New York (1998). This time the litigants were a diverse group including several NewYork hospitals and a group of potato-growers' from Idaho, and the case namedthe president himself. U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan struck down the line-item veto in February of 1998, and the Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional on 27 April.
Related Cases
- The Pocket Veto Case, 279 U.S. 655 (1929).
- Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939).
- Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969).
- Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737 (1984).
- Clinton v. City of New York, 188 S.Ct. 2091 (1998).
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