United States v. Texas

P R E L I M I N A R Y P R I N T
Volume 599 U. S. Part 1
Pages 670–735
OFFICIAL REPORTS
OF
T H E S U P R E M E C O U R T
June 23, 2023
REBECCA A. WOMELDORF
reporter of decisions
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N O T I C E : This preliminary print is subject to formal revision before
the bound volume is published. Users are requested to notify the Reporter
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pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors.

670 OCTOBER
TERM, 2022
Syllabus
UNITED STATES et al. v. TEXAS et al.
certiorari
before judgment to the united states
court of appeals for the fth circuit
No. 22–58. Argued November 29, 2022—Decided June 23, 2023
In 2021, the Secret ary of Homeland Secur ity promu lgated new
immigration-enforcement guidelines (Guidelines for the Enforcement of
Civil Immigration Law) that prioritize the arrest and removal from the
United States of noncitizens who are suspected terrorists or dangerous
criminals or who have unlawfully entered the country only recently, for
example. The States of Texas and Louisiana claim that the Guidelines
contravene two federal statutes that they read to require the arrest of
certain noncitizens upon their release from prison (8 U. S. C. § 1226(c))
or entry of a fnal order of removal (§ 1231(a)(2)). The District Court
found that the States would incur costs due to the Executive's failure to
comply with those alleged statutory mandates, and that the States had
standing to sue based on those costs. On the merits, the District Court
found the Guidelines unlawful and vacated them. The Fifth Circuit de-
clined to stay the District Court's judgment, and this Court granted
certiorari before judgment.
Held: Texas and Louisiana lack Article III standing to challenge the
Guidelines. Pp. 676–686.
(a) Under Article III, a plaintiff must have standing to sue. This
bedrock constitutional requirement has its roots in the separation of
powers. So the threshold question here is whether the States have
standing to maintain this suit. Based on this Court's precedents and
longstanding historical practice, the answer is no.
To establish standing, a plaintiff must show an injury in fact caused
by the defendant and redressable by a court order. The District Court
found that the States would incur additional costs due to the challenged
arrest policy. And monetary costs are an injury. But this Court has
stressed that the alleged injury must also “be legally and judicially cog-
nizable.” Raines v. Byrd, 521 U. S. 811, 819. That requires that the
dispute is “traditionally thought to be capable of resolution through the
judicial process.” Ibid. Here, the States cite no precedent, history, or
tradition of federal courts entertaining lawsuits of this kind. On the
contrary, this Court has previously ruled that a plaintiff lacks standing
to bring such a suit “when he himself is neither prosecuted nor threat-
ened with prosecution.” See Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U. S. 614,
619. The Linda R. S. Article III standing principle remains the law
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671
Syllabus
today, and the States have pointed to no case or historical practice hold-
i
ng otherwise. Pp. 675–678.
(b) There are good reasons why federal courts have not traditionally
entertained lawsuits of this kind. For one, when the Executive Branch
elects not to arrest or prosecute, it does not exercise coercive power
over an individual's liberty or property, and thus does not infringe upon
interests that courts often are called upon to protect. Moreover, such
lawsuits run up against the Executive's Article II authority to decide
“how to prioritize and how aggressively to pursue legal actions against
defendants who violate the law.” TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594
U. S. –––, –––. The principle of Executive Branch enforcement discre-
tion over arrests and prosecutions extends to the immigration context.
Courts also generally lack meaningful standards for assessing the pro-
priety of enforcement choices in this area, which are invariably affected
by resource constraints and regularly changing public-safety and public-
welfare needs. That is why this Court has recognized that federal
courts are generally not the proper forum for resolving claims that the
Executive Branch should make more arrests or bring more prosecutions.
Pp. 678–681.
(c) This holding does not suggest that federal courts may never enter-
tain cases involving the Executive Branch's alleged failure to make more
arrests or bring more prosecutions. First, the Court has adjudicated
selective-prosecution claims under the Equal Protection Clause in which
a plaintiff typically seeks to prevent his or her own prosecution. Sec-
ond, the standing analysis might differ when Congress elevates de facto
injuries to the status of legally cognizable injuries redressable by a fed-
eral court. Third, the standing calculus might change if the Executive
Branch wholly abandoned its statutory responsibilities to make arrests
or bring prosecutions. Fourth, a challenge to an Executive Branch pol-
icy that involves both arrest or prosecution priorities and the provision
of legal benefts or legal status could lead to a different standing analy-
sis. Fifth, policies governing the continued detention of noncitizens
who have already been arrested arguably might raise a different stand-
ing question than arrest or prosecution policies. But this case presents
none of those scenarios. Pp. 681–683.
(d) The discrete standing question raised by this case rarely arises
because federal statutes that purport to require the Executive Branch
to make arrests or bring prosecutions are rare. This case is different
from those in which the Federal Judiciary decides justiciable cases in-
volving statutory requirements or prohibitions on the Executive, be-
cause it implicates the Executive Branch's enforcement discretion and
raises the distinct question of whether the Federal Judiciary may in
effect order the Executive Branch to take enforcement actions. The

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672 UNITED
STATES v. TEXAS
Syllabus
Court's decision does not indicate any view on whether the Executive is
comply
ing with its statutory obligations. Nor does the Court's narrow
holding signal any change in the balance of powers between Congress
and the Executive. Pp. 684–686.
606 F. Supp. 3d 437, reversed.
Kavanaugh, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts,
C. J., and Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson, JJ., joined. Gorsuch, J.,
fled an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Thomas and Bar-
rett, JJ., joined, post, p. 686. Barrett, J., fled an opinion concurring in
the judgment, in which Gorsuch, J., joined, post, p. 704. Alito, J., fled
a dissenting opinion, post, p. 709.
So l i ci t o r Gene ral Prel ogar arg ued the cause for the
United States. With her on the brief were Principal Dep-
uty Assistant Attorney General Boynton, Deputy Solicitors
Gene ra l Fl e tch e r and Ganno n, Vi v ek Sur i, Au st in L.
Raynor, Daniel Tenny, and Michael Shih.
Judd E. Stone II, Solicitor General of Texas, argued the
cause for respondents. With him on the brief were Ken
Paxton, Attorney General of Texas, Brent Webster, First As-
sistant Attorney General, Ari Cuenin and Benjamin D. Wil-
son, Deputy Solicitors General, Eric J. Hamilton and Ryan
S. Baach, Assistant Solicitors General, Jeff Landry, Attor-
ney General of Louisiana, Elizabeth B. Murrill, Solicitor
General, and Joseph S. St. John, Deputy Solicitor General.*
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for the State of New
York et al. by Letitia James, Attorney General of New York, Barbara
D. Underwood, Solicitor General, Ester Murdukhayeva, Deputy Solicitor
General, and Andrea W. Trento, Assistant Solicitor General, Rob Bonta,
Attorney General of California, Michael Mongan, Solicitor General, Helen
H. Hong, Deputy Solicitor General, James F. Zahradka II, Supervising
Deputy Attorney General, and Christopher Paul and Kailani Medeiros,
Deputy Attorneys General, and Matthew J. Platkin, Acting Attorney Gen-
eral of New Jersey, and by the Attorneys General for their respective
jurisdictions as follows: William Tong of Connecticut, Kathleen Jennings
of Delaware, Karl A. Racine of the District of Columbia, Kwame Raoul
of Illinois, Aaron M. Frey of Maine, Brian E. Frosh of Maryland, Maura
Healey of Massachusetts, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Aaron D. Ford of
Nevada, Hector Balderas of New Mexico, Ellen F. Rosenbaum of Oregon,

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673
Opinion of the Court
Justice Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the Court.
In
2021, after President Biden took offce, the Department
of Homeland Security issued new Guidelines for immigration
enforcement. The Guidelines prioritize the arrest and re-
moval from the United States of noncitizens who are sus-
pected terrorists or dangerous criminals, or who have unlaw-
fully entered the country only recently, for example. Texas
and Louisiana sued the Department of Homeland Security.
According to those States, the Department's new Guidelines
violate federal statutes that purportedly require the Depart-
Peter F. Neronha of Rhode Island, Susanne R. Young of Vermont, and
Robert W. Ferguson of Washington; for Administrative Law Professors by
Adam S. Gershenson and Kathleen R. Hartnett; for the American Civil
Liberties Union et al. by Cody Wofsy, Cecillia D. Wang, Michael K. T.
Tan, Omar C. Jadwat, and David D. Cole; for Former Offcials of the De-
partment of Homeland Security et al. by Elizabeth B. Wydra and Brianne
J. Gorod; for Immigrant and Civil Rights Organizations et al. by Sirine
Shebaya and Alina Das; for the National Immigration Justice Center by
Charles Roth; for Public Citizen by Allison M. Zieve and Scott L. Nelson;
for Stephen I. Vladeck by Lindsay C. Harrison and Max Wolson; and for
21 Cities et al. by Daniel R. Suvor, Sylvia O. Hinds-Radix, Daniel R.
Satterberg, Michael Feuer, Leslie J. Girard, and John Daniel Reaves.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affrmance were fled for the State of
Arizona et al. by Mark Brnovich, Attorney General of Arizona, Drew C.
Ensign, Deputy Solicitor General, and Joseph A. Kanefeld, and by the
Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Steve Marshall
of Alabama, Leslie Rutledge of Arkansas, Christopher M. Carr of Georgia,
Theodore E. Rokita of Indiana, Derek Schmidt of Kansas, Daniel Cam-
eron of Kentucky, Lynn Fitch of Mississippi, Eric S. Schmitt of Missouri,
Austin Knudson of Montana, Douglas J. Peterson of Nebraska, Dave Yost
of Ohio, John M. O'Connor of Oklahoma, Alan Wilson of South Carolina,
Sean D. Reyes of Utah, Jason Miyares of Virginia, Patrick Morrissey of
West Virginia, and Bridget Hill of Wyoming; for the State of Florida by
Ashley Moody, Attorney General of Florida, Henry C. Whitaker, Solicitor
General, Jeffrey Paul DeSousa, Chief Deputy Solicitor General, Darrick
W. Monson, Assistant Solicitor General, and James H. Percival, Deputy
Attorney General; for Citizens United et al. by William J. Olson, Jere-
miah L. Morgan, Robert J. Olson, Michael Boos, and Daniel H. Jorjani;
and for Texas Sheriffs and Counties et al. by Christopher J. Hajec and
Kris W. Kobach.

674 UNITED
STATES v. TEXAS
Opinion of the Court
ment to arrest more criminal noncitizens pending their
remova
l.
The States essentially want the Federal Judiciary to order
the Executive Branch to alter its arrest policy so as to make
more arrests. But this Court has long held “that a citizen
lacks standing to contest the policies of the prosecuting au-
thority when he himself is neither prosecuted nor threatened
with prosecution.” Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U. S. 614,
619 (1973). Consistent with that fundamental Article III
principle, we conclude that the States lack Article III stand-
ing to bring this suit.
I
In 2021, Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas pro-
mulgated new “Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Im-
migration Law.” The Guidelines prioritize the arrest and
removal from the United States of noncitizens who are sus-
pected terrorists or dangerous criminals, or who have unlaw-
fully entered the country only recently, for example.
Texas and Louisiana sued the Department of Homeland
Security, as well as other federal offcials and agencies. Ac-
cording to those States, the Guidelines contravene two fed-
eral statutes that purportedly require the Department to
arrest more criminal noncitizens pending their removal.
First, the States contend that for certain noncitizens, such as
those who are removable due to a state criminal conviction,
§ 1226(c) of Title 8 says that the Department “shall” arrest
those noncitizens and take them into custody when they are
released from state prison. Second, § 1231(a)(2), as the
States see it, provides that the Department “shall” arrest
and detain certain noncitizens for 90 days after entry of a
fnal order of removal.
In the States' view, the Department's failure to comply
with those statutory mandates imposes costs on the States.
The States assert, for example, that they must continue to
incarcerate or supply social services such as healthcare and
education to noncitizens who should be (but are not being)
arrested by the Federal Government.
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The U. S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas
found
that the States would incur costs as a result of the
Department's Guidelines. Based on those costs, the District
Court determined that the States have standing. On the
merits, the District Court ruled that the Guidelines are un-
lawful, and vacated the Guidelines. 606 F. Supp. 3d 437,
502 (SD Tex. 2022); see 5 U. S. C. § 706(2). The U. S. Court
of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit declined to stay the Dis-
trict Court's judgment. 40 F. 4th 205 (2022). This Court
granted certiorari before judgment. 597 U. S. ––– (2022).
II
Article III of the Constitution confnes the federal judicial
power to “Cases” and “Controversies.” Under Article III,
a case or controversy can exist only if a plaintiff has standing
to sue—a bedrock constitutional requirement that this Court
has applied to all manner of important disputes. See, e. g.,
TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U. S. –––, ––– (2021); Cali-
fornia v. Texas, 593 U. S. –––, ––– (2021); Carney v. Adams,
592 U. S. –––, ––– – ––– (2020); Hollingsworth v. Perry, 570
U. S. 693, 704 (2013); Clapper v. Amnesty Int'l USA, 568
U. S. 398, 408 (2013); Raines v. Byrd, 521 U. S. 811, 818 (1997);
Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 559–560 (1992);
Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 750 (1984); Schlesinger v. Re-
servists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U. S. 208, 215 (1974);
United States v. Richardson, 418 U. S. 166, 171 (1974).
As this Court's precedents amply demonstrate, Article III
standing is “not merely a troublesome hurdle to be overcome
if possible so as to reach the `merits' of a lawsuit which a
party desires to have adjudicated; it is a part of the basic
charter promulgated by the Framers of the Constitution at
Philadelphia in 1787.” Valley Forge Christian College v.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc.,
454 U. S. 464, 476 (1982). The principle of Article III stand-
ing is “built on a single basic idea—the idea of separation of
powers.” Allen, 468 U. S., at 752. Standing doctrine helps
safeguard the Judiciary's proper—and properly limited—role
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676 UNITED
STATES v. TEXAS
Opinion of the Court
in our constitutional system. By ensuring that a plaintiff
has
standing to sue, federal courts “prevent the judicial proc-
ess from being used to usurp the powers of the political
branches.” Clapper, 568 U. S., at 408.
A
According to Texas and Louisiana, the arrest policy spelled
out in the Department of Homeland Security's 2021 Guide-
lines does not comply with the statutory arrest mandates
in § 1226(c) and § 1231(a)(2). The States want the Federal
Judiciary to order the Department to alter its arrest policy
so that the Department arrests more noncitizens.
1
The threshold question is whether the States have stand-
ing under Article III to maintain this suit. The answer
is no.
To establish standing, a plaintiff must show an injury in
fact caused by the defendant and redressable by a court
order. See Lujan, 504 U. S., at 560–561. The District
Court found that the States would incur additional costs be-
cause the Federal Government is not arresting more nonciti-
zens. Monetary costs are of course an injury. But this
Court has “also stressed that the alleged injury must be le-
gally and judicially cognizable.” Raines, 521 U. S., at 819.
That “requires, among other things,” that the “dispute is tra-
ditionally thought to be capable of resolution through the
judicial process”—in other words, that the asserted injury
is traditionally redressable in federal court. Ibid. (internal
quotation marks omitted); accord Valley Forge, 454 U. S., at
472. In adhering to that core principle, the Court has exam-
ined “history and tradition,” among other things, as “a mean-
ingful guide to the types of cases that Article III empowers
1
The States may want the Department to arrest all of the noncitizens
it is now arresting plus other noncitizens—or instead to arrest some of the
noncitizens it is now arresting plus other noncitizens. Either way, the
States seek a court order that would alter the Department's arrest policy
so that the Department arrests more noncitizens.

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federal courts to consider.” Sprint Communications Co. v.
APCC
Services, Inc., 554 U. S. 269, 274 (2008); see Trans-
Union LLC, 594 U. S., at ––– – –––.
The States have not cited any precedent, history, or tradi-
tion of courts ordering the Executive Branch to change its
arrest or prosecution policies so that the Executive Branch
makes more arrests or initiates more prosecutions. On the
contrary, this Court has previously ruled that a plaintiff
lacks standing to bring such a suit.
The leading precedent is Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410
U. S. 614 (1973). The plaintiff in that case contested a
State's policy of declining to prosecute certain child-support
violations. This Court decided that the plaintiff lacked
standing to challenge the State's policy, reasoning that in
“American jurisprudence at least,” a party “lacks a judicially
cognizable interest in the prosecution . . . of another.” Id.,
at 619. The Court concluded that “a citizen lacks standing
to contest the policies of the prosecuting authority when he
himself is neither prosecuted nor threatened with prosecu-
tion.” Ibid.
The Court's Article III holding in Linda R. S. applies to
challenges to the Executive Branch's exercise of enforcement
discretion over whether to arrest or prosecute. See id., at
617, 619; Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U. S. 748, 760–761, 767,
n. 13 (2005); cf. Sure-Tan, Inc. v. NLRB, 467 U. S. 883, 897
(1984) (citing Linda R. S. principle in immigration context
and stating that the petitioners there had “no judicially cog-
nizable interest in procuring enforcement of the immigration
laws” by the Executive Branch). And importantly, that Ar-
ticle III standing principle remains the law today; the States
have pointed to no case or historical practice holding other-
wise. A “telling indication of the severe constitutional
problem” with the States' assertion of standing to bring this
lawsuit “is the lack of historical precedent” supporting it.
Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Over-
sight Bd., 561 U. S. 477, 505 (2010) (internal quotation marks
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678 UNITED
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omitted); see also Raines, 521 U. S., at 826 (“Not only do
appel
lees lack support from precedent, but historical practice
appears to cut against them as well”).
In short, this Court's precedents and longstanding histori-
cal practice establish that the States' suit here is not the
kind redressable by a federal court.
B
Several good reasons explain why, as Linda R. S. held,
federal courts have not traditionally entertained lawsuits of
this kind.
To begin with, when the Executive Branch elects not to
arrest or prosecute, it does not exercise coercive power over
an individual's liberty or property, and thus does not infringe
upon interests that courts often are called upon to protect.
See Lujan, 504 U. S., at 561–562. And for standing pur-
poses, the absence of coercive power over the plaintiff makes
a difference: When “a plaintiff 's asserted injury arises from
the government's allegedly unlawful regulation (or lack of
regulation) of someone else, much more is needed” to estab-
lish standing. Id., at 562 (emphasis deleted).
2
Moreover, lawsuits alleging that the Executive Branch has
made an insuffcient number of arrests or brought an insuff-
cient number of prosecutions run up against the Executive's
Article II authority to enforce federal law. Article II of the
Constitution assigns the “executive Power” to the President
and provides that the President “shall take Care that the
Laws be faithfully executed.” U. S. Const., Art. II, § 1, cl. 1;
§ 3. Under Article II, the Executive Branch possesses au-
thority to decide “how to prioritize and how aggressively to
pursue legal actions against defendants who violate the law.”
TransUnion LLC, 594 U. S., at –––; see Lujan, 504 U. S.,
2
By contrast, when “the plaintiff is himself an object of the action (or
forgone action) at issue,” “there is ordinarily little question that the action
or inaction has caused him injury, and that a judgment preventing or re-
quiring the action will redress it.” Lujan, 504 U. S., at 561–562.
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at 576–578; Allen, 468 U. S., at 760–761. The Executive
Branch—not
the Judiciary—makes arrests and prosecutes
offenses on behalf of the United States. See United States
v. Nixon, 418 U. S. 683, 693 (1974) (“the Executive Branch
has exclusive authority and absolute discretion to decide
whether to prosecute a case”); Printz v. United States, 521
U. S. 898, 922–923 (1997) (Brady Act provisions held uncon-
stitutional because, among other things, they transferred
power to execute federal law to state offcials); United States
v. Armstrong, 517 U. S. 456, 464 (1996) (decisions about en-
forcement of “the Nation's criminal laws” lie within the “spe-
cial province of the Executive” (internal quotation marks
omitted)); Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 138 (1976) (“A law-
suit is the ultimate remedy for a breach of the law, and it is to
the President, and not to the Congress, that the Constitution
entrusts the responsibility to `take Care that the Laws be
faithfully executed' ” (quoting U. S. Const., Art. II, § 3)); see
also United States v. Cox, 342 F. 2d 167, 171 (CA5 1965).
That principle of enforcement discretion over arrests and
prosecutions extends to the immigration context, where the
Court has stressed that the Executive's enforcement discre-
tion implicates not only “normal domestic law enforcement
priorities” but also “foreign-policy objectives. ” Reno v.
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm., 525 U. S. 471,
490–491 (1999). In line with those principles, this Court has
declared that the Executive Branch also retains discretion
over whether to remove a noncitizen from the United States.
Arizona v. United States, 567 U. S. 387, 396 (2012) (“Federal
offcials, as an initial matter, must decide whether it makes
sense to pursue removal at all”).
In addition to the Article II problems raised by judicial
review of the Executive Branch's arrest and prosecution poli-
cies, courts generally lack meaningful standards for assess-
ing the propriety of enforcement choices in this area. After
all, the Executive Branch must prioritize its enforcement ef-
forts. See Wayte v. United States, 470 U. S. 598, 607–608
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680 UNITED
STATES v. TEXAS
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(1985). That is because the Executive Branch (i) invariably
lacks
the resources to arrest and prosecute every violator of
every law and (ii) must constantly react and adjust to the
ever-shifting public-safety and public-welfare needs of the
American people.
This case illustrates the point. As the District Court
found, the Executive Branch does not possess the resources
necessary to arrest or remove all of the noncitizens covered
by § 1226(c) and § 1231(a)(2). That reality is not an anom-
aly—it is a constant. For the last 27 years since § 1226(c)
and § 1231(a)(2) were enacted in their current form, all fve
Presidential administrations have determined that resource
constraints necessitated prioritization in making immigra-
tion arrests.
In light of inevitable resource constraints and regularly
changing public-safety and public-welfare needs, the Execu-
tive Branch must balance many factors when devising arrest
and prosecution policies. That complicated balancing proc-
ess in turn leaves courts without meaningful standards for
assessing those policies. Cf. Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U. S.
821, 830–832 (1985); Lincoln v. Vigil, 508 U. S. 182, 190–192
(1993). Therefore, in both Article III cases and Administra-
tive Procedure Act cases, this Court has consistently recog-
nized that federal courts are generally not the proper forum
for resolving claims that the Executive Branch should make
more arrests or bring more prosecutions. See Linda R. S.,
410 U. S., at 619; cf. Heckler, 470 U. S., at 831 (recognizing
the “general unsuitability for judicial review of agency deci-
sions to refuse enforcement”); ICC v. Locomotive Engineers,
482 U. S. 270, 283 (1987) (“it is entirely clear that the refusal
to prosecute cannot be the subject of judicial review”).
3
3
Also, the plaintiffs here are States, and federal courts must remain
mindful of bedrock Article III constraints in cases brought by States
against an executive agency or offcer. To be sure, States sometimes have
standing to sue the United States or an executive agency or offcer. See,
e. g., New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144 (1992). But in our system
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All of those considerations help explain why federal courts
have
not traditionally entertained lawsuits of this kind. By
concluding that Texas and Louisiana lack standing here, we
abide by and reinforce the proper role of the Federal Judi-
ciary under Article III. The States' novel standing argu-
ment, if accepted, would entail expansive judicial direction of
the Department's arrest policies. If the Court green-lighted
this suit, we could anticipate complaints in future years
about alleged Executive Branch under-enforcement of any
similarly worded laws—whether they be drug laws, gun
laws, obstruction of justice laws, or the like. We decline to
start the Federal Judiciary down that uncharted path. Our
constitutional system of separation of powers “contemplates
a more restricted role for Article III courts.” Raines, 521
U. S., at 828.
C
In holding that Texas and Louisiana lack standing, we do
not suggest that federal courts may never entertain cases
involving the Executive Branch's alleged failure to make
more arrests or bring more prosecutions.
First, the Court has adjudicated selective-prosecution
claims under the Equal Protection Clause. In those cases,
however, a party typically seeks to prevent his or her own
prosecution, not to mandate additional prosecutions against
other possible defendants. See, e. g., Wayte, 470 U. S., at
604; Armstrong, 517 U. S., at 459, 463.
Second, as the Solicitor General points out, the standing
analysis might differ when Congress elevates de facto inju-
of dual federal and state sovereignty, federal policies frequently generate
indirect effects on state revenues or state spending. And when a State
asserts, for example, that a federal law has produced only those kinds of
indirect effects, the State's claim for standing can become more attenu-
ated. See Massachusetts v. Laird, 400 U. S. 886 (1970); Florida v. Mellon,
273 U. S. 12, 16–18 (1927); cf. Lujan, 504 U. S., at 561–562. In short, none
of the various theories of standing asserted by the States in this case
overcomes the fundamental Article III problem with this lawsuit.
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ries to the status of legally cognizable injuries redressable
by
a federal court. See Brief for Petitioners 20, n. 3; cf.
TransUnion LLC, 594 U. S., at ––– – –––; Federal Election
Comm'n v. Akins, 524 U. S. 11, 20 (1998); Raines, 521 U. S.,
at 820, n. 3; Lujan, 504 U. S., at 578; Linda R. S., 410 U. S.,
at 617, n. 3. For example, Congress might (i) specifcally
authorize suits against the Executive Branch by a defned
set of plaintiffs who have suffered concrete harms from exec-
utive under-enforcement and (ii) specifcally authorize the
Judiciary to enter appropriate orders requiring additional ar-
rests or prosecutions by the Executive Branch.
Here, however, the relevant statutes do not supply such
specifc authorization. The statutes, even under the States'
own reading, simply say that the Department “shall” arrest
certain noncitizens. Given the “deep-rooted nature of law-
enforcement discretion,” a purported statutory arrest man-
date, without more, does not entitle any particular plaintiff
to enforce that mandate in federal court. Castle Rock, 545
U. S., at 761, 764–765, 767, n. 13; cf. Heckler, 470 U. S., at 835.
For an arrest mandate to be enforceable in federal court,
we would need at least a “stronger indication” from Con-
gress that judicial review of enforcement discretion is appro-
priate—for example, specifc authorization for particular
plaintiffs to sue and for federal courts to order more arrests
or prosecutions by the Executive. Castle Rock, 545 U. S., at
761. We do not take a position on whether such a statute
would suffce for Article III purposes; our only point is that
no such statute is present in this case.
4
Third, the standing calculus might change if the Executive
Branch wholly abandoned its statutory responsibilities to
make arrests or bring prosecutions. Under the Administra-
tive Procedure Act, a plaintiff arguably could obtain review
of agency non-enforcement if an agency “has consciously and
expressly adopted a general policy that is so extreme as
4
As the Solicitor General noted, those kinds of statutes, by infringing
on the Executive's enforcement discretion, could also raise Article II is-
sues. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 24–25.

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683
Opinion of the Court
to amount to an abdication of its statutory responsibilit-
ies.
” Heckler, 470 U. S., at 833, n. 4 (internal quotation
marks omitted); see id., at 839 (Brennan, J., concurring);
cf. 5 U. S. C. § 706(1). So too, an extreme case of non-
enforcement arguably could exceed the bounds of enforce-
ment discretion and support Article III standing. But the
States have not advanced a Heckler-style “abdication” argu-
ment in this case or argued that the Executive has entirely
ceased enforcing the relevant statutes. Therefore, we do
not analyze the standing ramifcations of such a hypotheti-
cal scenario.
Fourth, a challenge to an Executive Branch policy that in-
volves both the Executive Branch's arrest or prosecution pri-
orities and the Executive Branch's provision of legal benefts
or legal status could lead to a different standing analysis.
That is because the challenged policy might implicate more
than simply the Executive's traditional enforcement discre-
tion. Cf. Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of
Univ. of Cal., 591 U. S. –––, ––– – ––– (2020) (benefts such as
work authorization and Medicare eligibility accompanied by
non-enforcement meant that the policy was “more than sim-
ply a non-enforcement policy”); Texas v. United States, 809
F. 3d 134, 154 (CA5 2015) (Linda R. S. “concerned only non-
prosecution,” which is distinct from “both nonprosecution
and the conferral of benefts”), aff 'd by an equally divided
Court, 579 U. S. 547 (2016). Again, we need not resolve the
Article III consequences of such a policy.
Fifth, policies governing the continued detention of noncit-
izens who have already been arrested arguably might raise
a different standing question than arrest or prosecution poli-
cies. Cf. Biden v. Texas, 597 U. S. ––– (2022). But this case
does not concern a detention policy, so we do not address the
issue here.
5
5
This case concerns only arrest and prosecution policies, and we there-
fore address only that issue. As to detention, the Solicitor General has
represented that the Department's Guidelines do not affect continued de-
tention of noncitizens already in federal custody. See Brief for Petition-
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Opinion of the Court
D
The
discrete standing question raised by this case rarely
arises because federal statutes that purport to require the
Executive Branch to make arrests or bring prosecutions are
rare—not surprisingly, given the Executive's Article II au-
thority to enforce federal law and the deeply rooted history
of enforcement discretion in American law. Indeed, the
States cite no similarly worded federal laws. This case
therefore involves both a highly unusual provision of federal
law and a highly unusual lawsuit.
To be clear, our Article III decision today should in no way
be read to suggest or imply that the Executive possesses
some freestanding or general constitutional authority to dis-
regard statutes requiring or prohibiting executive action.
Moreover, the Federal Judiciary of course routinely and
appropriately decides justiciable cases involving statutory
requirements or prohibitions on the Executive. See, e. g.,
American Hospital Assn. v. Becerra, 596 U. S. –––, ––– – –––
(2022); Weyerhaeuser Co. v. United States Fish and Wildlife
Serv., 586 U. S. –––, ––– – ––– (2018); Zivotofsky v. Clinton,
566 U. S. 189, 196–201 (2012); Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U. S.
557, 592–595, 613–615, 635 (2006); id., at 636–646 (Kennedy,
J., concurring); Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343
U. S. 579, 637–638, 640 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring).
This case is categorically different, however, because it im-
plicates only one discrete aspect of the executive power—
namely, the Executive Branch's traditional discretion over
whether to take enforcement actions against violators of fed-
eral law. And this case raises only the narrow Article III
ers 24; Tr. of Oral Arg. 40 (Solicitor General: “the Guidelines govern only
decisions about apprehension and removal, whether to charge a non-citizen
in the frst place. . . . the Guidelines don't have anything to do with contin-
ued detention”); Guidelines Memorandum, App. 111 (“This memorandum
provides guidance for the apprehension and removal of noncitizens”); id.,
at 113 (“We will prioritize for apprehension and removal noncitizens who
are a threat to our national security, public safety, and border security”).
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685
Opinion of the Court
standing question of whether the Federal Judiciary may in
effec
t order the Executive Branch to take enforcement ac-
tions against violators of federal law—here, by making more
arrests. Under this Court's Article III precedents and the
historical practice, the answer is no.
6
It bears emphasis that the question of whether the federal
courts have jurisdiction under Article III is distinct from the
question of whether the Executive Branch is complying with
the relevant statutes—here, § 1226(c) and § 1231(a)(2). In
other words, the question of reviewability is different from
the question of legality. We take no position on whether
the Executive Branch here is complying with its legal obliga-
tions under § 1226(c) and § 1231(a)(2). We hold only that
the federal courts are not the proper forum to resolve this
dispute.
On that point, even though the federal courts lack Arti-
cle III jurisdiction over this suit, other forums remain open
for examining the Executive Branch's arrest policies. For
example, Congress possesses an array of tools to analyze and
infuence those policies—oversight, appropriations, the legis-
lative process, and Senate confrmations, to name a few. Cf.
Raines, 521 U. S., at 829; Lincoln, 508 U. S., at 193. And
through elections, American voters can both infuence Exec-
utive Branch policies and hold elected offcials to account for
enforcement decisions. In any event, those are political
checks for the political process. We do not opine on whether
any such actions are appropriate in this instance.
6
As part of their argument for standing, the States also point to Massa-
chusetts v. EPA, 549 U. S. 497 (2007). Putting aside any disagreements
that some may have with Massachusetts v. EPA, that decision does not
control this case. The issue there involved a challenge to the denial of a
statutorily authorized petition for rulemaking, not a challenge to an exer-
cise of the Executive's enforcement discretion. Id., at 520, 526; see also
id., at 527 (noting that there are “key differences between a denial of a
petition for rulemaking and an agency's decision not to initiate an enforce-
ment action” and that “an agency's refusal to initiate enforcement proceed-
ings is not ordinarily subject to judicial review”).
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Gorsuch, J., concurring in judgment
The Court's standing decision today is narrow and simply
mai
ntains the longstanding jurisprudential status quo. See
Linda R. S., 410 U. S., at 619. The Court's decision does not
alter the balance of powers between Congress and the
Executive, or change the Federal Judiciary's traditional role
in separation of powers cases.
***
In sum, the States have brought an extraordinarily un-
usual lawsuit. They want a federal court to order the Exec-
utive Branch to alter its arrest policies so as to make more
arrests. Federal courts have not traditionally entertained
that kind of lawsuit; indeed, the States cite no precedent for
a lawsuit like this. The States lack Article III standing be-
cause this Court's precedents and the “historical experience”
preclude the States' “attempt to litigate this dispute at this
time and in this form.” Raines, 521 U. S., at 829. And be-
cause the States lack Article III standing, the District Court
did not have jurisdiction. We reverse the judgment of the
District Court.
It is so ordered.
Justice Gorsuch, with whom Justice Thomas and Jus-
tice Barrett join, concurring in the judgment.
The Court holds that Texas and Louisiana lack Article III
standing to challenge the Department of Homeland Securi-
ty's Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration
Law. I agree. But respectfully, I diagnose the jurisdic-
tional defect differently. The problem here is redressability.
I
Article III vests federal courts with the power to decide
“Cases” and “Controversies.” Standing doctrine honors the
limitations inherent in this assignment by ensuring judges
attend to actual harms rather than abstract grievances. “If
individuals and groups could invoke the authority of a federal

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court to forbid what they dislike for no more reason than
they
dislike it, we would risk exceeding the judiciary's lim-
ited constitutional mandate and infringing on powers com-
mitted to other branches of government.” American Le-
gion v. American Humanist Assn., 588 U. S. –––, ––– (2019)
(Gorsuch, J., concurring in judgment).
To establish standing to sue in federal court, a plaintiff
must show that it has suffered a concrete and particularized
injury, one that is both traceable to the defendant and re-
dressable by a court order. See Lujan v. Defenders of Wild-
life, 504 U. S. 555, 560–561 (1992). If a plaintiff fails at any
step, the court cannot reach the merits of the dispute. See
Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83,
102–104 (1998). This is true whether the plaintiff is a pri-
vate person or a State. After all, standing doctrine derives
from Article III, and nothing in that provision suggests a
State may have standing when a similarly situated private
party does not. See Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U. S. 497,
536–538 (2007) (Roberts, C. J., dissenting).
The Court holds that Texas and Louisiana lack standing to
challenge the Guidelines because “a party lacks a judicially
cognizable interest in the prosecution . . . of another.” Ante,
at 677 (internal quotation marks omitted). To be sure, the
district court found that the Guidelines have led to an in-
crease in the number of aliens with criminal convictions and
fnal orders of removal who are released into the States.
606 F. Supp. 3d 437, 459–463, 467 (SD Tex. 2022). The dis-
trict court also found that, thanks to this development, the
States have spent, and continue to spend, more money on
law enforcement, incarceration, and social services. Id., at
463–465, 467. Still, the Court insists, “[s]everal good rea-
sons explain why” these harms are insuffcient to afford the
States standing to challenge the Guidelines. Ante, at 678.
I confess to having questions about each of the reasons the
Court offers. Start with its observation that the States
have not pointed to any “historical practice” of courts order-
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ing the Executive Branch to change its arrest or prosecution
pol
icies. Ante, at 677, 678. The Court is right, of course,
that “history and tradition offer a meaningful guide to the
types of cases that Article III empowers federal courts to
consider.” TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U. S. –––, –––
(2021) (internal quotation marks omitted). But, again, the
district court found that the Guidelines impose “signifcant
costs” on the States. 606 F. Supp. 3d, at 495. The Court
today does not set aside this fnding as clearly erroneous.
Nor does anyone dispute that even one dollar's worth of
harm is traditionally enough to “qualify as concrete injur[y]
under Article III.” TransUnion, 594 U. S., at –––; see also
Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, 592 U. S. –––, ––– (2021). In-
deed, this Court has allowed other States to challenge other
Executive Branch policies that indirectly caused them mone-
tary harms. See, e. g., Department of Commerce v. New
York, 588 U. S. –––, ––– – ––– (2019). So why are these
States now forbidden from doing the same?
Next, the Cour t contends that, “when the Executive
Branch elects not to arrest or prosecute, it does not exercise
coercive power over an individual's liberty or property.”
Ante, at 678. Here again, in principle, I agree. But if an
exercise of coercive power matters so much to the Article
III standing inquiry, how to explain decisions like Massachu-
setts v. EPA? There the Court held that Massachusetts had
standing to challenge the federal government's decision not
to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehi-
cles. See 549 U. S., at 516–526. And what could be less
coercive than a decision not to regulate? In Massachusetts
v. EPA, the Court chose to overlook this diffculty in part
because it thought the State's claim of standing deserved
“special solicitude.” Id., at 520. I have doubts about that
move. Before Massachusetts v. EPA, the notion that States
enjoy relaxed standing rules “ha[d] no basis in our jurispru-
dence.” Id., at 536 (Roberts, C. J., dissenting). Nor has
“special solicitude” played a meaningful role in this Court's
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decisions in the years since. Even so, it's hard not to wonder
why
the Court says nothing about “special solicitude” in this
case. And it's hard not to think, too, that lower courts
should just leave that idea on the shelf in future ones.
Finally, the Court points to the fact that Article II vests
in the President considerable enforcement discretion. Ante,
at 678–680. So much so that “courts generally lack mean-
ingful standards for assessing the propriety of [the Execu-
tive Branch's] enforcement choices.” Ante, at 679. But al-
most as soon as the Court announces this general rule, it
adds a caveat, stressing that “[t]his case concerns only arrest
and prosecution policies.” Ante, at 683, n. 5. It's a curious
qualifcation. Article II does not have an Arrest and Prose-
cution Clause. It endows the President with the “executive
Power,” § 1, cl. 1, and charges him with “tak[ing] Care” that
federal laws are “faithfully executed,” § 3. These provisions
give the President a measure of discretion over the enforce-
ment of all federal laws, not just those that can lead to arrest
and prosecution. So if the Court means what it says about
Article II, can it mean what it says about the narrowness of
its holding? There's another curious qualifcation in the
Cour t's opi ni on too. “ [T]he st andi ng ca lcu lus might
change,” we are told, “if the Executive Branch wholly aban-
doned its statutory responsibilities to make arrests or bring
prosecutions.” Ante, at 682. But the Court declines to say
more than that because “the States have not advanced” such
an argument. Ante, at 683. Is that true, though? The
States have pleaded a claim under the Take Care Clause.
App. 106. Is that not an abdication argument? Did they
fail to plead it properly? Or is the Court simply ignoring it?
II
As I see it, the jurisdictional problem the States face in
this case isn't the lack of a “judicially cognizable” interest
or injury. Ante, at 677 (internal quotation marks omitted).
The States proved that the Guidelines increase the number

690 UNITED
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of aliens with criminal convictions and fnal orders of re-
mova
l released into the States. They also proved that, as
a result, they spend more money on everything from law
enforcement to healthcare. The problem the States face
concerns something else altogether—a lack of redressability.
To establish redressability, a plaintiff must show from the
outset of its suit that its injuries are capable of being reme-
died “ `by a favorable decision.' ” Lujan, 504 U. S., at 561;
see also id., at 570, n. 5 (plurality opinion). Ordinarily, to
remedy harms like those the States demonstrated in this
suit, they would seek an injunction. The injunction would
direct federal offcials to detain aliens consistent with what
the States say the immigration laws demand. But even as-
suming an injunction like that would redress the States' inju-
ries, that form of relief is not available to them.
It is not available because of 8 U. S. C. § 1252(f )(1). There,
Congress provided that “no court (other than the Supreme
Court) shall have jurisdiction or authority to enjoin or re-
strain the operation of ” certain immigration laws, including
the very laws the States seek to have enforced in this case.
If there were any doubt about how to construe this com-
mand, we resolved it in Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez, 596
U. S. ––– (2022). In that case, we held that § 1252(f )(1) “pro-
hibits lower courts from . . . order[ing] federal offcials to
take or to refrain from taking actions to enforce, implement,
or otherwise carry out the specifed statutory provisions.”
Id., at –––. Put simply, the remedy that would ordinarily
have the best chance of redressing the States' harms is a
forbidden one in this case.
The district court thought it could sidestep § 1252(f )(1).
Instead of issuing an injunction, it purported to “vacate” the
Guidelines pursuant to § 706(2) of the Administrative Proce-
dure Act (APA), 5 U. S. C. § 706(2). 606 F. Supp. 3d, at 498–
501, and n. 71. Vacatur, as the district court understood it,
is a distinct form of relief that operates directly on agency
action, depriving it of legal force or effect. See id., at 499–
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500. And vacatur, the district court reasoned, does not of-
fend
§ 1252(f )(1), because it does not entail an order directing
any federal offcial to do anything. See id., at 501, n. 71.
The States embrace this line of argument before us. Brief
for Respondents 43–47; Tr. of Oral Arg. 75–82.
It's a clever workaround, but it doesn't succeed. Start
with perhaps the simplest reason. Assume for the moment
the district court was right that § 1252(f )(1) does not bar va-
catur orders and that § 706(2) authorizes courts to issue
them. Even so, a vacatur order still does nothing to redress
the States' injuries. The Guidelines merely advise federal
offcials about how to exercise their prosecutorial discretion
when it comes to deciding which aliens to prioritize for ar-
rest and removal. A judicial decree rendering the Guide-
lines a nullity does nothing to change the fact that federal
offcials possess the same underlying prosecutorial discre-
tion. Nor does such a decree require federal offcials to
change how they exercise that discretion in the Guidelines'
absence. It's a point even the States have acknowledged.
Tr. of Oral Arg. 82–83; see also id., at 75–77, 125.
Faced with that diffculty, the States offer this reply. As
a practical matter, they say, we can expect federal offcials
to alter their arrest and prosecution priorities in light of a
judicial opinion reasoning that the Guidelines are unlawful.
See id., at 80, 82–83. But this doesn't work either. What-
ever a court may say in an opinion does no more to compel
federal offcials to change how they exercise their prosecuto-
rial discretion than an order vacating the Guidelines. Nor
do we measure redressability by asking whether a court's
legal reasoning may inspire or shame others into acting dif-
ferently. We measure redressability by asking whether a
court's judgment will remedy the plaintiff 's harms. As this
Court recently put it: “It is a federal court's judgment, not
its opinion, that remedies an injury; thus it is the judgment,
not the opinion, that demonstrates redressability.” Haa-
land v. Brackeen, 599 U. S. 255, 294 (2023). If the rule were
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otherwise, and courts could “simply assume that everyone
.
. . will honor the legal rationales that underlie their decrees,
then redressability [would] always exist.” Franklin v.
Massachusetts, 505 U. S. 788, 825 (1992) (Scalia, J., concur-
ring in part and concurring in judgment).
Perhaps sensing they have run into yet another roadblock,
the States try one last way around it. Fleetingly, they di-
rect us to the parenthetical in § 1252(f )(1): “(other than the
Supreme Court).” That language, they say, allows this
Court to invoke the All Writs Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1651, to fash-
ion its own injunction. And the possibility that this Court
might award them relief, the States suggest, makes their in-
juries redressable after all. See Brief for Respondents 47;
cf. post, at 720 (Alito, J., dissenting).
It's an argument that yields more questions than answers.
The parenthetical the States cite is a “curious” provision, one
that “does not appear to have an analogue elsewhere in the
United States Code.” Biden v. Texas, 597 U. S. –––, –––
(2022) (Barrett, J., dissenting). Even assuming it permits
this Court to award an injunction when a case comes to us on
review, it does not obviously solve the States' redressability
problem. Normally, after all, a plaintiff must establish re-
dressability from the outset of the suit. See Lujan, 504
U. S., at 561; see also id., at 570, n. 5 (plurality opinion). Not
only that, a plaintiff must show a favorable decision is
“ `likely' ” to provide effectual relief. Id., at 561. When the
States fled this suit, however, the possibility that it might
fnd its way to this Court was speculative at best. See id.,
at 570, n. 5 (plurality opinion) (rejecting an argument that
redressability could depend on “the fortuity that [a] case has
made its way to this Court”).
Nor is that the only complication. Ordinarily, to win an
injunction from any court, a party must satisfy several fac-
tors. See eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L. L. C., 547 U. S.
388, 391 (2006). The States relegate any mention of these
factors to a short, formulaic paragraph tacked onto the end
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of their brief. See Brief for Respondents 48. Worse, the
only
injunction they seek is one barring “implementation
and enforcement” of the Guidelines—essentially an injunction
imitating a vacatur order. Id., at 47. And as we have seen,
an order like that would leave offcials with their prosecuto-
rial discretion intact. See supra, at 691. So, even if this
Court were to take the unusual step of issuing and superin-
tending its own injunction, giving the States the very order
they seek is hardly sure to redress the injuries they assert.
III
Beyond these redressability problems may lie still another.
Recall the essential premise on which the district court pro-
ceeded—that the APA empowers courts to vacate agency
action. The federal government vigorously disputes this
premise, arguing that the law does not contemplate this form
of relief. The reasons the government offers are plenty and
serious enough to warrant careful consideration.
A
Traditionally, when a federal court fnds a remedy merited,
it provides party-specifc relief, directing the defendant to
take or not take some action relative to the plaintiff. If the
court's remedial order affects nonparties, it does so only inci-
dentally. See, e. g., Doran v. Salem Inn, Inc., 422 U. S. 922,
931 (1975) (“[N]either declaratory nor injunctive relief can
directly interfere with the enforcement of contested statutes
or ordinances except with respect to the particular federal
plaintiffs.”); Alemite Mfg. Corp. v. Staff, 42 F. 2d 832 (CA2
1930) (L. Hand, J.) (“[A] court of equity . . . cannot lawfully
enjoin the world at large.”); see also Trump v. Hawaii, 585
U. S. –––, ––– (2018) (Thomas, J., concurring). This tracks
the founding-era understanding that courts “render a judg-
ment or decree upon the rights of the litigant[s].” Rhode
Island v. Massachusetts, 12 Pet. 657, 718 (1838). It also
ensures that federal courts respect the limits of their Arti-
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cle III authority to decide cases and controversies and avoid
trench
ing on the power of the elected branches to shape legal
rights and duties more broadly. After all, the “judicial
Power” is the power to “decide cases for parties, not ques-
tions for everyone.” S. Bray, Multiple Chancellors: Reform-
ing the National Injunction, 131 Harv. L. Rev. 417, 421 (2017).
Despite these foundational principles, in recent years a
number of lower courts have asserted the authority to issue
decrees that purport to defne the rights and duties of some-
times millions of people who are not parties before them.
Three years ago, I refected on the rise of the “universal
injunctio[n]” and raised questions about its consistency with
the separation of powers and our precedents. Department
of Homeland Security v. New York, 589 U. S. –––, ––– (2020)
(opinion concurring in grant of stay). I observed, too, that
“the routine issuance of universal injunctions” has proven
“unworkable, sowing chaos for litigants, the government,
courts, and all those affected by these [sometimes] confict-
ing ” decrees. Ibid.
Matters have not improved with time. Universal injunc-
tions continue to intrude on powers reserved for the elected
branches. They continue to deprive other lower courts of
the chance to weigh in on important questions before this
Court has to decide them. They continue to encourage par-
ties to engage in forum shopping and circumvent rules gov-
erning class-wide relief. Recent events have highlighted
another problem too. Sometimes, the government may ef-
fectively submit to a universal decree running against it in
order to avoid “the usual and important requirement, under
the [APA], that a regulation originally promulgated using
notice and comment . . . may only be repealed through notice
and comment.” Arizona v. City and County of San Fran-
cisco, 596 U. S. –––, ––– (2022) (Roberts, C. J., concurring).
It is a strategy that amounts to little more than “ `rule-
making-by-collective-acquiescence.' ” Ibid.; see also Danco
Laboratories, LLC v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine,
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598 U. S. –––, ––– (2023) (Alito, J., dissenting from grant of
appl
ication for stays); Arizona v. Mayorkas, 598 U. S.
–––, ––– – ––– (2023) (statement of Gorsuch, J.).
Today's case presents a variation on the theme. The dis-
trict court ordered “wholesale vacatur” of the Guidelines,
rendering them inoperable with respect to any person any-
where. 606 F. Supp. 3d, at 499, 502. As authority for its
course, the district court cited § 706(2) of the APA. That
provision does not say anything about “vacating ” agency ac-
tion (“wholesale” or otherwise). Instead, it authorizes a re-
viewing court to “set aside” agency action. Still, from those
two words alone, the district court thought the power to nul-
lify the Guidelines with respect to anyone anywhere surely
follows. See 606 F. Supp. 3d, at 498–500.
Color me skeptical. If the Congress that unanimously
passed the APA in 1946 meant to overthrow the “bedrock
practice of case-by-case judgments with respect to the par-
ties in each case” and vest courts with a “new and far-
reaching ” remedial power, it surely chose an obscure way
to do it. Arizona v. Biden, 40 F. 4th 375, 396 (CA6 2022)
(Sutton, C. J., concurring). At the very least, it is worth a
closer look.
B
Begin with the words “set aside” in isolation. If they
might suggest to some a power to “vacate” agency action in
the sense of rendering it null and void, just as naturally they
might mean something else altogether. They might simply
describe what a court usually does when it fnds a federal or
state statute unconstitutional, or a state law preempted by
a federal one. Routinely, a court will disregard offensive
provisions like these and proceed to decide the parties' dis-
pute without respect to them. In Dennis v. United States,
341 U. S. 494 (1951), for example, Justice Frankfurter ob-
served that “[w]e are to set aside the judgment of those
whose duty it is to legislate only if ” the Constitution requires
it. Id., at 525 (concurring opinion). Justice Frankfurter

696 UNITED
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hardly meant to suggest the Court had the power to erase
st
atutes from the books. See id., at 525–526. Instead, he
used the phrase to mean that a court should disregard—re-
fuse to apply—an unconstitutional law. It is a usage that
was common at the time of the APA's adoption and that re-
mains so today. See Webster's New International Diction-
ary 2291 (2d ed. 1954) (defning “set aside” as “to put to one
side; discard; dismiss” and “to reject from consideration;
overrule”); Webster's New World College Dictionary 1329
(5th ed. 2016) (defning “set aside” as “to set apart” and “to
discard; dismiss; reject”).
There are many reasons to think § 706(2) uses “set aside”
to mean “disregard” rather than “vacate.” For one thing, at
the time of the APA's adoption, conventional wisdom re-
garded agency rules as “quasi-legislative” in nature. See
Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U. S. 602, 624,
628 (1935); see also D. Currie & F. Goodman, Judicial Review
of Federal Administrative Action: Quest for the Optimum
Forum, 75 Colum. L. Rev. 1, 40 (1975). And federal courts
have never enjoyed the power to “vacate” legislation. In-
stead, they possess “little more than the negative power to
disregard an unconstitutional enactment.” Massachusetts
v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447, 488 (1923). Reading “set aside” to
mean “disregard” ensures parallel judicial treatment of stat-
utes and rules.
For another thing, the term “set aside” appears in § 706 of
the APA. That section is titled “Scope of review,” a title it
has borne since the law's enactment in 1946. 60 Stat. 243.
And ordinarily, when we think about the scope of a court's
review, we do not think about the remedies the court may
authorize after reaching its judgment on the merits. In-
stead, we think about the court's decisional process leading
up to that judgment. Understanding “set aside” as a com-
mand to disregard an unlawful rule in the decisional process
fts perfectly within this design. Understanding the phrase
as authorizing a remedy does not.
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What follows in § 706 appears to confrm the point. The
st
atute begins by providing that, “[t]o the extent necessary
to decision and when presented, the reviewing court shall
decide all relevant questions of law, interpret constitutional
and statutory provisions, and determine the meaning and
applicability of the terms of an agency action.” Exactly as
expected, we fnd an instruction about the decisional proc-
ess—one requiring the court to apply “de novo review on
questions of law” as it considers the parties' arguments in
the course of reaching its judgment. Kisor v. Wilkie, 588
U. S. –––, ––– (2019) (Gorsuch, J., concurring in judgment)
(internal quotation marks omitted). Nothing here speaks
to remedies.
The remaining statutory language is more of the same.
Section 706 goes on to instruct that “[t]he reviewing court
shall . . . hold unlawful and set aside agency action, fndings,
and conclusions found to be,” among other things, “arbi-
trary,” “capricious,” “contrary to constitutional right,” “in
excess of ” statutory authority, or “unsupported by substan-
tial evidence.” § 706(2). Looking at the provision as a
whole, rather than focusing on two words in isolation, we see
further evidence that it governs a court's scope of review or
decisional process. The statute tells judges to resolve the
cases that come to them without regard to defcient agency
action, fndings, or conclusions—an instruction entirely con-
sistent with the usual “negative power” of courts “to disre-
gard” that which is unlawful. Mellon, 262 U. S., at 488.
Other details are telling too. Consider the latter part of
§ 706(2)'s directive to “set aside agency action, fndings, and
conclusions.” The APA defnes “agency action” to include
“the whole or a part of an agency rule, order, license, sanc-
tion, relief, or the equivalent or denial thereof, or failure to
act.” 5 U. S. C. § 551(13). A court can disregard any of
those things. But what would it even mean to say a court
must render null and void an agency's failure to act? Notice,
too, the language about “fndings.” Often, judges disregard
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factual fndings unsupported by record evidence and resolve
the
case at hand without respect to them. See Fed. Rule
Civ. Proc. 52(a)(6) (“Findings of fact . . . must not be set aside
unless clearly erroneous.”). None of that means we may
pretend to rewrite history and scrub any trace of faulty fnd-
ings from the record.
Consider as well the larger statutory context. Section
702 restricts judicial review to “person[s]” who have “suf-
fer[ed] legal wrong because of agency action, or [been] ad-
versely affected or aggrieved by agency action.” The provi-
sion also instructs that “any mandatory or injunctive decree
shall specify the Federal offcer or offcers . . . personally
responsible for compliance.” Here, it seems, Congress nod-
ded to traditional standing rules and remedial principles.
Yet under the district court's reading, we must suppose Con-
gress proceeded just a few paragraphs later to plow right
through those rules and empower a single judge to award a
novel form of relief affecting parties and nonparties alike.
Then there is § 703. That is where the APA most clearly
discusses remedies. Section 703 authorizes aggrieved per-
sons to bring “any applicable form of legal action, including
actions for declaratory judgments or writs of prohibitory
or mandatory injunction or habeas corpus.” Conspicuously
missing from the list is vacatur. And what exactly would a
“form of legal action” seeking vacatur look like anyway?
Would it be a creature called a “writ of vacatur”? Nobody
knows (or bothers to tell us). Nor is it apparent why Con-
gress would have listed most remedies in § 703 only to bury
another (and arguably the most powerful one) in a later sec-
tion addressed to the scope of review. Cf. J. Harrison, Sec-
tion 706 of the Administrative Procedure Act Does Not Call
for Universal Injunctions or Other Universal Remedies, 37
Yale J. Reg. Bull. 37, 37, 45–46 (2020).
The district court's reading of “set aside” invites still other
anomalies. Section 706(2) governs all proceedings under
the APA. Any interpretation of “set aside” therefore must
make sense in the context of an enforcement proceeding, an

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Gorsuch, J., concurring in judgment
action for a declaratory judgment, a suit for an injunction,
or
habeas. See § 703. This poses a problem for the district
court's interpretation, for no one thinks a court adjudicating
a declaratory action or a habeas petition “vacates” agency
action along the way. See Brief for United States 41–42;
Harrison, 37 Yale J. Reg. Bull., at 46. The anomaly dissi-
pates, however, if we read § 706(2) as instructing courts
about when they must disregard agency action in the process
of deciding a case.
Imagine what else it would mean if § 706(2) really did au-
thorize vacatur. Ordinary joinder and class-action proce-
dures would become essentially irrelevant in administrative
litigation. Why bother jumping through those hoops when
a single plaintiff can secure a remedy that rules the world?
See Bray, 131 Harv. L. Rev., at 464–465. Surely, too, it is
odd that leading scholars who wrote extensively about the
APA after its adoption apparently never noticed this sup-
posed remedy. See J. Harrison, Vacatur of Rules Under the
Administrative Procedure Act, 40 Yale J. Reg. Bull. 119, 127–
128 (2023) (discussing scholarship of Professors Kenneth
Culp Davis and Louis Jaffe); see also Department of Justice,
Attorney General's Manual on the Administrative Procedure
Act 108 (1947) (offering the Executive Branch's view that
§ 706 simply “restates the present law as to the scope of judi-
cial review”). These are not people who would have missed
such a major development in their feld.
C
As always, there are arguments on the other side of the
ledger, and the States tee up several. They frst reply that
§ 706(2) must allow vacatur of agency action because the
APA models judicial review of agency action on appellate
review of judgments, and appellate courts sometimes vacate
judgments. Brief for Respondents 40. But just because
“Congress may sometimes refer to collateral judicial review
of executive action as `an appeal' . . . does not make it an
`appeal' akin to that taken from the district court to the court
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of appeals.” Garland v. Ming Dai, 593 U. S. –––, ––– (2021).
N
or does any of that tell us in which respects the APA mod-
els judicial review of agency action on appellate review of
lower court judgments. According to one scholar, the “sa-
lient” similarities between appellate review and judicial re-
view of agency action concern the standards of review—in
both types of proceedings, a reviewing court engages in a
more rigorous review of legal questions and a more deferen-
tia l review of factua l findings. T. Merr i ll, Ar ticle III,
Agency Adjudication, and the Origins of the Appellate Re-
view Model of Administrative Law, 111 Colum. L. Rev. 939,
940–941 (2011). None of that has to do with remedies; once
again, it concerns a court's scope of review or decisional
process.
The States next invoke § 706(1) and § 705. The former
provides that courts shall “compel agency action unlawfully
withheld or unreasonably delayed.” The latter says courts
“may issue all necessary and appropriate process to postpone
the effective date of an agency action or to preserve status or
rights pending conclusion of the review proceedings.” The
States insist that “[i]t would be illogical” for the APA to
authorize these remedies but not vacatur. Brief for Re-
spondents 40. Is it so clear, though, that § 706(1) and § 705
authorize remedies? Section 706(1) does seem to contem-
plate a remedy. But it's one § 703 mentions—mandatory in-
junctions. So § 706(1) might not authorize a remedy as
much as confrm the availability of a traditional remedy to
address agency inaction. The same could be said about
§ 705; it might just confrm courts' authority to issue tradi-
tional equitable relief pending judicial review. Cf. Sampson
v. Murray, 415 U. S. 61, 69, n. 15 (1974) (explaining that § 705
was “primarily intended to refect existing law”).
The States also direct us to scholarship that in turn pur-
ports to identify a few instances of federal courts “setting
aside” agency action in the years leading up to the APA.
See Brief for Respondents 41; see also Brief for State of
Florida as Amicus Curiae 17. It is not obvious, however,
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that these few cases stand for so much. In two of them, this
Cour
t upheld the agency action in question and thus had
no occasion to opine on appropriate relief. See Houston v.
St. Louis Independent Packing Co., 249 U. S. 479, 486–487
(1919); The Assigned Car Cases, 274 U. S. 564, 584 (1927).
In a third case, the plaintiff sought “to enjoin enforcement
of ” an order of the Federal Communications Commission.
Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. United States, 316
U. S. 407, 408 (1942). That is a claim for traditional equita-
ble relief, and indeed, the Court held that the complaint
“state[d] a cause of action in equity” and remanded for fur-
ther proceedings. Id., at 425. A fourth case, involving an
order of the Interstate Commerce Commission, seems of a
piece. There, a district court held the Commission's order
invalid and “restrain[ed] . . . enforcement” of it. Balti-
more & Ohio R. Co. v. United States, 5 F. Supp. 929, 936
(ND Ohio 1933). This Court affrmed. See United States
v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 293 U. S. 454 (1935). True, this
Court described the case as an “appeal from [a] decree . . .
setting aside” the Commission's order. Id., at 455. But the
fact that the lower court had only restrained enforcement of
the order goes to show that “set aside” did not then (and
does not now) necessarily translate to “vacate.”
At the end of the day, the States fall back on other lower
court decisions. “For more than 30 years,” they say, “vaca-
tur has been the ordinary result when the D. C. Circuit de-
termines that agency regulations are unlawful.” Brief for
Respondents 42 (internal quotation marks omitted). Doubt-
less, to the extent those decisions are carefully reasoned,
they merit respectful consideration. But, equally, they do
not bind us. Cf. post, at 721, n. 7 (Alito, J., dissenting) (ob-
serving that this Court has only ever “assumed” that the
APA authorizes vacatur).
In raising questions about the district court's claim that
§ 706(2) authorizes vacatur of agency action, I do not pretend
that the matter is open and shut. Thoughtful arguments
and scholarship exist on both sides of the debate. Nor do
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I mean to equate vacatur of agency action with universal
i
njunctions. Despite some similarities, courts can at least
arguably trace their authority to order vacatur to language
in a statute and practice in some lower courts. But the
questions here are serious ones. And given the volume of
litigation under the APA, this Court will have to address
them sooner or later. Until then, we would greatly beneft
from the considered views of our lower court colleagues.
D
Suppose my doubts about vacatur are unfounded. Sup-
pose the APA really does authorize both traditional forms of
equitable relief (in § 703) and a more expansive equitable
power to vacate agency action (in § 706). Even if that were
true, a district court should “think twice—and perhaps twice
again—before granting ” such sweeping relief. Arizona v.
Biden, 40 F. 4th, at 396 (Sutton, C. J., concurring).
After all, this Court has long instructed that equitable re-
lief “must be limited to the inadequacy that produced [the]
injury in fact.” Gill v. Whitford, 585 U. S. –––, ––– (2018)
(internal quotation marks omitted). Any remedy a judge
authorizes must not be ``more burdensome [to the defendant]
than necessary to redress the complaining parties.'' Cali-
fano v. Yamasaki, 442 U. S. 682, 702 (1979). And faithful
application of those principles suggests that an extraordi-
nary remedy like vacatur would demand truly extraordinary
circumstances to justify it. Cf. S. Bray & P. Miller, Getting
Into Equity, 97 N. D. L. Rev. 1763, 1797 (2022) (“[I]n equity it
all connects—the broader and deeper the remedy the plaintiff
wants, the stronger the plaintiff 's story needs to be.”).
The temptations a single district judge may face when in-
vited to vacate agency rules are obvious. Often, plaintiffs
argue that everyone deserves to beneft from their effort to
litigate the case and the court's effort to decide it. Judges
may think effciency and uniformity favor the broadest possi-
ble relief. But there are serious countervailing considera-
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Gorsuch, J., concurring in judgment
tions. As with universal injunctions, vacatur can stymie the
order
ly review of important questions, lead to forum shop-
ping, render meaningless rules about joinder and class ac-
tions, and facilitate efforts to evade the APA's normal rule-
making processes. Vacatur can also sweep up nonparties
who may not wish to receive the beneft of the court's deci-
sion. Exactly that happened here. Dozens of States, coun-
ties, and cities tell us they did not seek and do not want the
“beneft” of the district court's vacatur order in this case.
See Brief for New York et al. as Amici Curiae 1–2; Brief for
21 Cities, Counties, and Local Government Organizations as
Amici Curiae 2–3.
More importantly still, universal relief, whether by way of
injunction or vacatur, strains our separation of powers. It
exaggerates the role of the Judiciary in our constitutional
order, allowing individual judges to act more like a legisla-
ture by decreeing the rights and duties of people nationwide.
This Court has warned that “[f]ew exercises of the judicial
power are more likely to undermine public confdence in the
neutrality and integrity of the Judiciary than one which casts
[courts] in the role of a Council of Revision, conferring on
[themselves] the power to invalidate laws at the behest of
anyone who disagrees with them. ” Ar izon a Chr isti an
School Tuition Organization v. Winn, 563 U. S. 125, 145–146
(2011). At a minimum, then, district courts must carefully
consider all these things before doling out universal relief.
And courts of appeals must do their part, too, asking
whether party-specifc relief can adequately protect the
plaintiff's interests. If so, an appellate court should not hes-
itate to hold that broader relief is an abuse of discretion.
Cf. Kentucky v. Biden, 57 F. 4th 545, 556–557 (CA6 2023)
(Larsen, J.).
*
In our system of government, federal courts play an im-
portant but limited role by resolving cases and controversies.
Standing doctrine honors this limitation at the front end of

704 UNITED
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Barrett, J., concurring in judgment
every lawsuit. It preserves a forum for plaintiffs seeking
rel
ief for concrete and personal harms while fltering out
those with generalized grievances that belong to a legisla-
ture to address. Traditional remedial rules do similar work
at the back end of a case. They ensure successful plaintiffs
obtain meaningful relief. But they also restrain courts from
altering rights and obligations more broadly in ways that
would interfere with the power reserved to the people's
elected representatives. In this case, standing and reme-
dies intersect. The States lack standing because federal
courts do not have authority to redress their injuries. Sec-
tion 1252(f )(1) denies the States any coercive relief. A vaca-
tur order under § 706(2) supplies them no effectual relief.
And such an order itself may not even be legally permissible.
The States urge us to look past these problems, but I do not
see how we might. The Constitution affords federal courts
considerable power, but it does not establish “government
by lawsuit.” R. Jackson, The Struggle for Judicial Suprem-
acy 286–287 (1941).
Justice Barrett, with whom Justice Gorsuch joins,
concurring in the judgment.
I agree with the Court that the States lack standing to
challenge the Federal Government's Guidelines for the en-
forcement of immigration law. But I reach that conclusion
for a different reason: The States failed to show that the
District Court could order effective relief. Justice Gor-
such ably explains why that is so. Ante, p. 686 (opinion
concurring in judgment). And because redressability is an
essential element of Article III standing, the District Court
did not have jurisdiction.
The Court charts a different path. In its view, this case
can be resolved based on what it calls the “fundamental Arti-
cle III principle” that “ `a citizen lacks standing to contest
the policies of the prosecuting authority when he himself
is neither prosecuted nor threatened with prosecution.' ”
Ante, at 674 (quoting Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U. S.
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614, 619 (1973)). In other words, the Court says, the States
have
not asserted a “ `judicially cognizable interest' ” in this
case. Ante, at 677. Respectfully, I would not take this
route.
I
To begin with, I am skeptical that Linda R. S. suffces to
resolve this dispute. First, the Court reads that decision
too broadly. Consider the facts. The “mother of an illegiti-
mate child” sued in federal court, “apparently seek[ing] an
injunction running against the district attorney forbidding
him from declining prosecution” of the child's father for fail-
ure to pay child support. 410 U. S., at 614–616. She ob-
jected, on equal protection grounds, to the State's view that
“fathers of illegitimate children” were not within the ambit
of the relevant child-neglect statute. Id., at 616.
We agreed that the plaintiff “suffered an injury stemming
from the failure of her child's father to contribute support
payments.” Id., at 618. But if the plaintiff “were granted
the requested relief, it would result only in the jailing of the
child's father.” Ibid. Needless to say, the prospect that
prosecution would lead to child-support payments could, “at
best, be termed only speculative.” Ibid. For this reason,
we held that the plaintiff lacked standing. Only then, after
resolving the standing question on redressability grounds,
did we add that “a private citizen lacks a judicially cognizable
interest in the prosecution or nonprosecution of another.”
Id., at 619. In short, we denied standing in Linda R. S.
because it was speculative that the plaintiff 's requested re-
lief would redress her asserted injury, not because she failed
to allege one. See Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environ-
mental Study Group, Inc., 438 U. S. 59, 79, n. 24 (1978).
Viewed properly, Linda R. S. simply represents a specifc
application of the general principle that “when the plaintiff
is not himself the object of the government action or inaction
he challenges, standing is not precluded, but it is ordinarily
`substantially more diffcult' to establish” given the causation
and redressability issues that may arise. Lujan v. Defend-
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ers of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 562 (1992). That is true for
the
States here. I see little reason to seize on the case's
bonus discussion of whether “a private citizen” has a “judi-
cially cognizable interest in the prosecution or nonprosecu-
tion of another” to establish a broad rule of Article III stand-
ing. Linda R. S., 410 U. S., at 619.
Second, even granting the broad principle the Court takes
from Linda R. S., I doubt that it applies with full force in
this case. Unlike the plaintiff in Linda R. S., the States do
not seek the prosecution of any particular individual—or
even any particular class of individuals. See ASARCO Inc.
v. Kadish, 490 U. S. 605, 624 (1989) (“[F]ederal standing
`often turns on the nature and source of the claim as-
serted' ”). In fact, they disclaim any interest in the prose-
cution or nonprosecution of noncitizens. See Brief for Re-
spondents 15; Tr. of Oral Arg. 124–125. They acknowledge
that 8 U. S. C. § 1226(c)(1)'s detention obligation “only applies
until” the Government makes “a decision whether or not to
prosecute.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 100. And they readily concede
that if the Government decides not to prosecute, any deten-
tion obligation imposed by § 1226(c)(1) “immediately ends.”
Ibid. The States make similar concessions with respect to
§ 1231(a)(2). They maintain, for example, that § 1231(a)(2)
applies “only where the United States has used its prosecuto-
rial discretion to bring a notice to appear, to prosecute that
all the way to a fnal . . . order of removal.” Id., at 130. But
if the Government for any reason “choose[s] to discontinue
proceedings,” the alleged detention obligation does not at-
tach. Id., at 131.
The upshot is that the States do not dispute that the Gov-
ernment can prosecute whomever it wants. They seek, in-
stead, the temporary detention of certain noncitizens during
elective removal proceedings of uncertain duration. And
the States' desire to remove the Guidelines' infuence on the
Government's admittedly broad discretion to enforce immi-
gration law meaningfully differs from the Linda R. S. plain-
tiff 's desire to channel prosecutorial discretion toward a
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Barrett, J., concurring in judgment
particular target. Given all of this, I would not treat Linda
R.
S. as the “leading precedent” for resolving this case.
Ante, at 677. In my view, the Court is striking new ground
rather than applying settled principles.
II
In addition to its reliance on Linda R. S., the Court offers
several reasons why “federal courts have not traditionally
entertained lawsuits of this kind.” Ante, at 678. I am
skeptical that these reasons are rooted in Article III stand-
ing doctrine.
Take, for example, the Court's discussion of Castle Rock v.
Gonzales, 545 U. S. 748 (2005). Ante, at 682. There, we
reasoned that g iven “ [t]he deep-rooted nature of law-
enforcement discretion,” a “true mandate of police action
would require some stronger indication” from the legislature
than, for example, the bare use of the word “ `shall' ” in a
statutory directive. Castle Rock, 545 U. S., at 761. The
Court today concludes that “no such statute is present in this
case.” Ante, at 682. But Castle Rock is not a case about
Article III standing. It addressed “whether an individual
who has obtained a state-law restraining order has a consti-
tutionally protected property interest” under the Fourteenth
Amendment “in having the police enforce the restraining
order when they have probable cause to believe it has been
violated.” 545 U. S., at 750–751. I see no reason to opine
on Castle Rock's application here, especially given that the
parties (correctly) treat Castle Rock as relevant to the mer-
its of their statutory claims rather than to the States' stand-
ing to bring them. See Brief for Petitioners 8; Brief for
Respondents 30.
The Court also invokes “the Executive's Article II author-
ity to enforce federal law.” Ante, at 678. I question
whether the President's duty to “take Care that the Laws be
faithfully executed,” Art. II, § 3, is relevant to the standing
analysis. While it is possible that Article II imposes justi-
ciability limits on federal courts, it is not clear to me why
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any such limit should be expressed through Article III's
def
nition of a cognizable injury. Moreover, the Court works
the same magic on the Take Care Clause that it does on
Castle Rock: It takes an issue that entered the case on the
merits and transforms it into one about standing. See ante,
at 689 (opinion of Gorsuch, J.).
The Court leans, too, on principles set forth in Heckler v.
Chaney, 470 U. S. 821 (1985). Ante, at 680, 682–683. But,
again, Heckler was not about standing. It addressed a dif-
ferent question: “the extent to which a decision of an admin-
istrative agency to exercise its `discretion' not to undertake
certain enforcement actions is subject to judicial review
under the Administrative Procedure Act.” 470 U. S., at 823;
see also 5 U. S. C. § 701(a)(2) (the APA's judicial-review provi-
sions do not apply “to the extent” that “agency action is com-
mitted to agency discretion by law”). Heckler held that “an
agency's decision not to take enforcement action should be
presumed immune from judicial review under” the APA.
470 U. S., at 832. But such a decision “is only presumptively
unreviewable; the presumption may be rebutted where the
substantive statute has provided guidelines for the agency
to follow in exercising its enforcement powers.” Id., at 832–
833. Whatever Heckler's relevance to cases like this one, it
does not establish a principle of Article III standing. And
elevating it to the status of a constitutional rule would trans-
form it from a case about statutory provisions (that Congress
is free to amend) to one about a constitutional principle (that
lies beyond Congress's domain). Although the Court notes
that Heckler involved the APA, its confation of Heckler with
standing doctrine is likely to cause confusion. See ante, at
680 (analogizing “Article III cases” to “Administrative Proce-
dure Act cases”).
***
The Court weaves together multiple doctrinal strands to
create a rule that is not only novel, but also in tension with

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709
Alito, J., dissenting
other decisions. See ante, at 687–689 (opinion of Gorsuch,
J
.). In my view, this case should be resolved on the familiar
ground that it must be “ `likely,' as opposed to merely `specu-
lative,' ” that any injury “will be `redressed by a favorable
decision.' ” Lujan, 504 U. S., at 561. I respectfully concur
only in the judgment.
Justice Alito, dissenting.
The Court holds Texas lacks standing to challenge a fed-
eral policy that inficts substantial harm on the State and its
residents by releasing illegal aliens with criminal convictions
for serious crimes. In order to reach this conclusion, the
Court brushes aside a major precedent that directly controls
the standing question, refuses to apply our established test
for standing, disregards factual fndings made by the District
Court after a trial, and holds that the only limit on the power
of a President to disobey a law like the important provision
at issue is Congress's power to employ the weapons of inter-
branch warfare—withholding funds, impeachment and re-
moval, etc. I would not blaze this unfortunate trail. I
would simply apply settled law, which leads ineluctably to
the conclusion that Texas has standing.
This Court has long applied a three-part test to determine
whether a plaintiff has standing to sue. Under that test, a
plaintiff must plead and ultimately prove that it has been
subjected to or imminently faces an injury that is: (1) “con-
crete and particularized,” (2) “fairly traceable to the chal-
lenged action,” and (3) “likely” to be “redressed by a favor-
able decision.” Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S.
555, 560–561 (1992) (internal quotation marks and alterations
omitted). Under that familiar test, Texas clearly has stand-
ing to bring this suit.
1
1
In a case with multiple plaintiffs, Article III permits us to reach the
merits if any plaintiff has standing. Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic
and Institutional Rights, Inc., 547 U. S. 47, 52, n. 2 (2006). Because
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Nevertheless, the United States (the defendant in this
case)
has urged us to put this framework aside and adopt a
striking new rule. At argument, the Solicitor General was
asked whether it is the position of the United States that the
Constitution does not allow any party to challenge a Presi-
dent's decision not to enforce laws he does not like. What
would happen, the Solicitor General was asked, if a President
chose not to enforce the environmental laws or the labor
laws? Would the Constitution bar an injured party from
bringing suit? She responded:
“That's correct under this Court's precedent, but the
framers intended political checks in that circumstance.
You know, if—if an administration did something that
extreme and said we're just not going to enforce the law
at all, then the President would be held to account by
the voters, and Congress has tools at its disposal as
well.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 50 (emphasis added).
Thus, according to the United States, even if a party
clearly meets our three-part test for Article III standing, the
Constitution bars that party from challenging a President's
decision not to enforce the law. Congress may wield what
the Solicitor General described as “political . . . tools”—which
presumably means such things as withholding funds, refus-
ing to confrm Presidential nominees, and impeachment and
removal—but otherwise Congress and the American people
must simply wait until the President's term in offce expires.
The Court—at least for now—does not fully embrace this
radical theory and instead holds only that, with some small
and equivocal limitations that I will discuss, no party may
challenge the Executive's “arrest and prosecution policies.”
Ante, at 683, n. 5. But the Court provides no principled
explanation for drawing the line at this point, and that raises
Texas clearly meets our test for Article III standing, it is not necessary
to consider whether the other plaintiff, the State of Louisiana, also satis-
fes that test.
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711
Alito, J., dissenting
the concern that the Court's only reason for framing its rule
as
it does is that no more is needed to dispose of this case.
In future cases, Presidential power may be extended even fur-
ther. That disturbing possibility is bolstered by the Court's
refusal to reject the Government's broader argument.
As I will explain, nothing in our precedents even remotely
suppor ts th is grossly inflated concepti on of “executive
Power,” U. S. Const., Art. II, § 1, which seriously infringes
the “legislative Powers” that the Constitution grants to Con-
gress, Art. I, § 1. At issue here is Congress's authority to
control immigration, and “[t]his Court has repeatedly empha-
sized that `over no conceivable subject is the legislative
power of Congress more complete than it is over' the admis-
sion of aliens.” Fiallo v. Bell, 430 U. S. 787, 792 (1977). In
the exercise of that power, Congress passed and President
Clinton signed a law that commands the detention and re-
moval of aliens who have been convicted of certain particu-
larly dangerous crimes. The Secretary of Homeland Secu-
rity, however, has instructed his agents to disobey this
legislative command and instead follow a different policy that
is more to his liking. And the Court now says that no party
injured by this policy is allowed to challenge it in court.
That holding not only violates the Constitution's allocation
of authority among the three branches of the Federal Gov-
ernment; it also undermines federalism. This Court has
held that the Federal Government's authority in the feld of
immigration severely restricts the ability of States to enact
laws or follow practices that address harms resulting from
illegal immigration. See Arizona v. United States, 567 U. S.
387, 401 (2012). If States are also barred from bringing suit
even when they satisfy our established test for Article III
standing, they are powerless to defend their vital interests.
If a President fails or refuses to enforce the immigration
laws, the States must simply bear the consequences. That
interpretation of executive authority and Article III's case or
controversy requirement is deeply and dangerously fawed.
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I
The
Court's opinion omits much that is necessary to under-
stand the signifcance of its decision, and I therefore begin
by summarizing the relevant statutory provisions, the chal-
lenged Department of Homeland Security (DHS) action, and
the District Court's fndings of fact regarding the injury
faced by the State of Texas as the result of what DHS has
done.
A
The relevant statutory provisions have fgured in several
prior decisions, and in those cases we have recounted how
they came to be enacted and have clearly described what
they require. These provisions were part of the Illegal Im-
migration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of
1996 (IIRIRA), which was adopted “against a backdrop of
wholesale failure by the [Immigration and Naturalization
Service] to deal with increasing rates of criminal activity by
aliens.” Demore v. Kim, 538 U. S. 510, 518 (2003).
2
Con-
gress concluded that a central cause of that failure was the
Attorney General's “broad discretion to conduct individual-
ized bond hearings and to release criminal aliens from cus-
tody during their removal proceedings.” Id., at 519. To
remedy this problem, Congress “subtract[ed] some of that
discretion when it comes to the arrest and release of criminal
aliens.” Nielsen v. Preap, 586 U. S. –––, ––– (2019) (empha-
sis in original).
Two such limits are important here. First, 8 U. S. C.
§ 1226(c) directs the Government to “take into custody any
alien” inadmissible or deportable on certain criminal or ter-
rorist grounds “when the alien is released” from criminal
custody, including when such an alien is released on “parole,
supervised release, or probation.” Second, § 1231(a) im-
poses a categorical detention mandate. Section 1231(a)(2)
2
The Immigration and Naturalization Service was merged into DHS
in 2003.
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Alito, J., dissenting
provides that the Gover nment “sha ll detain [an] a l ien”
“
[d]uring the removal period,” which often begins either
when an “order of removal becomes administratively fnal”
or when an “alien is released from detention or confnement”
not arising from an immigration process, § 1231(a)(1)(B).
This requirement is reinforced by the direction that “[u]nder
no circumstance during the removal period shall the [Gov-
ernment] release an alien” found inadmissible or deportable
under almost any of the grounds relevant under § 1226(c).
§ 1231(a)(2). And § 1231(a)(1)(A) commands that the Gov-
ernment “shall remove the alien” within the removal period.
All of our recent decisions interpreting these provisions
confir m that, for covered a l iens, sha ll means sha ll; it
does not mean “may.” See Johnson v. Guzman Chavez,
594 U. S. –––, ––– – –––, and n. 2 (2021); Nielsen, 586 U. S.,
at ––– – –––. Until quite recently, that was the Govern-
ment's understanding as well. See Biden v. Texas, 597 U. S.
–––, ––– – ––– (2022) (Alito, J., dissenting).
Actions taken by Congress when IIRIRA was enacted un-
derscore this conclusion. Because the provisions described
above left the Executive with no discretion to refrain from
arresting and detaining covered aliens, even during the time
immediately after IIRIRA's enactment when the Executive
was still “expand[ing] its capacities” to enforce the new law,
Congress passed “transition rules [that] delayed the onset of
the Secretary's obligation to begin making arrests as soon as
covered aliens were released from criminal custody.” Niel-
sen, 586 U. S., at –––. If the Executive had possessed the
discretion to decline to enforce the new mandates in light of
“resource constraints,” see ante, at 680, those transition
rules would have been entirely “superfuous.” Nielsen, 586
U. S., at –––.
Despite this clear text and background, the majority now
claims that the President's “enforcement discretion” sur-
vived these mandates, ante, at 679, but there is no basis for
that conclusion. Certainly it is not supported by the cases
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Alito, J., dissenting
it cites. They either underscore the general rule that the
E
xecutive possesses enforcement discretion, see Reno v.
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm., 525 U. S. 471,
490–491 (1999), or pair that general rule with the observation
that the States cannot limit the Government's discretion in
pursuing removal, see Arizona, 567 U. S., at 396, 409. Noth-
ing in those decisions is inconsistent with Congress's power
to displace executive discretion, and the fact that “fve Presi-
dential administrations” sometimes neglected the mandates
is likewise irrelevant. See ante, at 680. As I have stressed
before, the Executive cannot “acquire authority forbidden by
law through a process akin to adverse possession,” Biden v.
Texas, 597 U. S., at ––– (dissenting opinion), and that is true
even if the adverse possession is bipartisan.
B
The events that gave rise to this case began on Janu-
ary 20, 2021, when the Acting Secretary of DHS issued a
memorandum with “enforcement priorities” for the detention
and removal of aliens found to be in this country illegally.
This memorandum prioritized: (1) aliens “whose apprehen-
sion” implicated “national security,” (2) aliens not present
“before November 1, 2020,” and (3) aliens due to be released
from criminal confnement who had both been “convicted of
an `aggravated felony' ” and were “determined to pose a
threat to public safety.” 606 F. Supp. 3d 437, 454 (SD Tex.
2022) (internal quotation marks omitted); see § 1101(a)(43)
(defning “aggravated felony”). This prioritization was in-
consistent with the § 1226(c) arrest mandate, which extends
to all aliens convicted of any crime within a long list of statu-
tory categories. 606 F. Supp. 3d, at 454–455.
In Febr uary, Immigrati on and Customs Enforcement
(ICE), an arm of DHS, issued a second memorandum that
slightly modifed the earlier priorities and stated that “ `pre-
approval' ” would generally be required “for enforcement ac-
tions” against persons outside these priority groups. Id., at
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Alito, J., dissenting
455–456. This memorandum was also inconsistent with the
rele
vant statutes.
After some litigation regarding these two memoranda, a
new DHS Secretary issued a Final Memorandum instruct-
ing that even aliens in priority groups need not necessarily
be apprehended and removed. App. 113–115. Rather, the
Final Memorandum directed DHS personnel to consider non-
statutory “aggravating and mitigating factors” in deciding
whether to detain an alien. Id., at 114–115. It further
stated that DHS “personnel should not rely on the fact of [a
qualifying] conviction” when exercising “prosecutorial dis-
cretion.” Id., at 115. Thus, the Final Memorandum did not
simply permit deviations from the statutory mandates; it
fatly contradicted those mandates by stating that qualifying
convictions were insuffcient grounds for initiating arrest, de-
tention, and removal.
C
Texas and Louisiana challenged this Final Memorandum
in federal court under the Administrative Procedure Act
(APA). After a 2-day bench trial, the District Court found
in favor of the States and made detailed fndings of fact that
bear on the issue of standing.
Much of the District Court's analysis of that issue focused
on the Final Memorandum's effect on the “detainer” system,
606 F. Supp. 3d, at 459–463, and it is therefore important to
understand how that system works in relation to the rele-
vant statutory provisions. When an alien in state custody
for a criminal offense is identifed as falling within a category
of aliens whose apprehension and detention is required by
§§ 1226(a) and (c), the Government should lodge a “detainer”
with the State so that the Government can take the alien
into custody when he or she is released by the State. Then,
when an alien is about to be released, a cooperative State
will notify DHS so that it can be ready to assume its obliga-
tion under §§ 1226(a) and (c) to take the alien into federal
custody. When that occurs, the State is spared the burdens
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STATES v. TEXAS
Alito, J., dissenting
it would have to bear if the alien, after release, had been
placed
under state law on probation, parole, or supervised
release. But if DHS rescinds a detainer before such an alien
is released (or never lodges a detainer in the frst place),
those burdens fall on the State.
After reviewing the parties' evidence, the District Court
found that in the frst month after the substantive policy
change brought about by the January 2021 DHS memoran-
dum, ICE had rescinded 141 detainers in Texas.
3
Ninety-
fve of the criminal aliens whose detainers were rescinded
were then released on a form of state supervision. Seven-
teen of them went on to violate their terms of supervision,
and four committed new crimes. Id., at 459.
The court then examined what had taken place during just
the time “since the Final Memorandum became effective”
and found that “because of the Final Memorandum,” “ICE
ha[d] continued to rescind detainers placed on criminal aliens
in [Texas's] custody,” and the court identifed 15 specifc cases
in which this had occurred. Id., at 460. Rejecting the Gov-
ernment's claim that these dropped detainers were necessary
in light of “limited resources,” the court found that “the Gov-
ernment . . . persistently underutilized existing detention
facilities” during the relevant time and that the average
daily detained population in April 2022 was less than 40% of
the 3-year high in August 2019. Id., at 453, 481, 488.
Based on these fndings of fact and historical data, the Dis-
trict Court identifed four categories of costs that Texas had
suffered and would continue to bear as a result of the rele-
vant DHS actions. First, the court calculated the dollars-
and-cents cost that Texas had to bear in order to supervise
criminal aliens who were released in violation of §§ 1226(a),
(c). Id., at 463. Second, it noted the costs associated with
criminal recidivism. Id., at 464. Third, it found that some
3
This fgure excludes instances where a detainer was withdrawn but
then reissued, or where an alien previously subject to a withdrawn de-
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Alito, J., dissenting
juvenile offenders who “are not detained by ICE because of
the
Final Memorandum” will attend Texas public schools
(and at least one juvenile due to be released will do so).
Ibid. Fourth, it concluded that the hundreds of millions of
dollars that Texas annually spends on healthcare for illegal
aliens would increase when some criminal aliens not de-
tained “because of the Final Memorandum” make use of
those services. Id., at 465.
Concluding that these costs established Texas's injury for
standing purposes, the District Court went on to hold that
the Final Memorandum was contrary to law and that Texas
had therefore established a violation of the APA.
4
As I will
explain, it is a common practice for courts in APA cases to
set aside an improper fnal agency action, and that is what
the District Court did here. It vacated the Final Memo-
randum pending further action by DHS, id., at 499, but it
declined to issue injunctive or declaratory relief, id., at
501–502.
The Government asked the Court of Appeals to stay the
District Court's order vacating the Final Memorandum, but
that court refused to do so and observed that the Govern-
ment had not “come close” to showing “ `clear error' ” in the
District Court's factual fndings on the injuries that Texas
had already incurred and would continue to incur because of
the Final Memorandum. 40 F. 4th 205, 216–217 (CA5 2022).
II
Before I address the Court's inexplicable break from our
ordinary standing analysis, I will frst explain why Texas
easily met its burden to show a concrete, particularized in-
4
The District Court also concluded that the Final Memorandum was
“arbitrary and capricious,” and had not undergone “notice and comment,”
resulting in separate APA violations. 606 F. Supp. 3d, at 492, 495. Be-
cause the majority's standing analysis applies equally to any APA viola-
tion, I focus only on the contrary-to-law claim and express no opinion on
these further claims.
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Alito, J., dissenting
jury that is traceable to the Final Memorandum and redress-
able
by the courts. Lujan, 504 U. S., at 560–561.
A
Injury in fact. The District Court's factual fndings,
which must be accepted unless clearly erroneous, quantifed
the cost of criminal supervision of aliens who should have
been held in DHS custody and also identifed other burdens
that Texas had borne and would continue to bear going for-
ward. These fndings suffced to establish a concrete injury
that was specifc to Texas. TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez,
594 U. S. –––, ––– (2021); see ante, at 676 (conceding that such
costs are “of course an injury”).
Traceability. The District Court found that each cate-
gory of cost would increase “because of the Final Memoran-
dum,” rather than decisions that DHS personnel would make
irrespective of the directions that memorandum contains.
606 F. Supp. 3d, at 460, 464, 465 (emphasis added).
The majority does not hold—and in my judgment, could
not plausibly hold—that these fndings are clearly erroneous.
Instead, it observes only that a “State's claim for standing
can become more attenuated” when based on the “indirect
effects” of federal policies “on state revenues or state spend-
ing.” Ante, at 681, n. 3. But while it is certainly true that
indirect injuries may be harder to prove, an indirect fnancial
injury that is proved at trial supports standing. And that
is what happened here. As Justice Gorsuch notes, just a
few years ago, we found in a very important case that a State
had standing based in part on indirect fnancial injury.
Ante, at 688 (opinion concurring in judgment) (citing Depart-
ment of Commerce v. New York, 588 U. S. –––, ––– – –––
(2019)). There is no justifcation for a conficting holding
here.
In any event, many of the costs in this case are not indi-
rect. When the Federal Government refuses or fails to com-
ply with §§ 1226(a) and (c) as to criminal aliens, the direct
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Alito, J., dissenting
result in many cases is that the State must continue its su-
perv
ision. As noted, the District Court made specifc fnd-
ings about the fnancial cost that Texas incurred as a result
of DHS's failure to assume custody of aliens covered by
§§ 1226(a) and (c). And the costs that a State must bear
when it is required to assume the supervision of criminal
aliens who should be kept in federal custody are not only
fnancial. Criminal aliens whom DHS unlawfully refuses to
detain may be placed on state probation, parole, or super-
vised release, and some will commit new crimes and end up
in a state jail or prison. Probation, parole, and corrections
offcers are engaged in dangerous work that can put their
lives on the line.
Redressability. A court order that forecloses reliance on
the memorandum would likely redress the States' injuries.
If, as the District Court found, DHS personnel rescind de-
tainers “because of ” the Final Memorandum, then vacating
that memorandum would likely lead to those detainers' re-
maining in place.
B
While the majority does not contest redressability, Jus-
tice Gorsuch’s concurrence does, citing two reasons. But
the frst is contrary to precedent, and the second should not
be addressed in this case.
The frst asserted reason is based on the inability of the
lower courts to issue a broad injunction forbidding enforce-
ment of the Final Memorandum. See § 1252(f )(1).
5
In this
case, the District Court did not issue injunctive relief. In-
5
Section 1252(f )(1) reads in full:
“Regardless of the nature of the action or claim or of the identity of the
party or parties bringing the action, no court (other than the Supreme
Court) shall have jurisdiction or authority to enjoin or restrain the opera-
tion of the provisions of part IV of this subchapter, as amended by the
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996,
other than with respect to the application of such provisions to an individ-
ual alien against whom proceedings under such part have been initiated.”
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stead, it vacated the Final Memorandum, and Justice Gor-
such
argues that this relief did not redress Texas's injuries
because it does not “require federal offcials to change how
they exercise [their prosecutorial] discretion in the [Final
Memorandum's] Guidelines' absence.” Ante, at 691. There
are two serious problems with this argument.
First, § 1252(f )(1) bars injunctive relief by courts “other
than the Supreme Court.” (Emphasis added.) As a result,
redress in the form of an injunction can be awarded by this
Court. According to the Court's decision last Term in Biden
v. Texas, our authority to grant such relief “le[ft] no doubt”
as to our jurisdiction even if § 1252(f )(1) precluded the lower
courts from setting aside an administrative action under the
APA. 597 U. S., at –––. We have not been asked to revisit
this holding, see id., at ––– – ––– (Barrett, J., dissenting),
and I would not do so here.
Second, even if Biden v. Texas could be distinguished and
no injunctive relief can be awarded by any court, setting
aside the Final Memorandum satisfes the redressability re-
quirement. Our decision in Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505
U. S. 788 (1992), settles that question. There, the Court
held that a declaratory judgment regarding the lawfulness
of Executive Branch action satisfed redressability because
“it [was] substantially likely that the President and other ex-
ecutive . . . offcials would abide by an authoritative interpre-
tation” of the law “even though they would not be directly
bound by such a determination.” Id., at 803 (opinion of
O'Connor, J.).
6
Here, we need not speculate about how DHS
offcers would respond to vacatur of the Final Memorandum
because the District Court found that the DHS personnel
responsible for detainers were rescinding them “because of ”
6
While only four of eight Justices fnding standing in Franklin formally
joined this explanation, see 505 U. S., at 824, n. 1 (Scalia, J., concurring in
part and concurring in judgment), the Court subsequently ratifed this
reasoning. See Utah v. Evans, 536 U. S. 452, 460, 463–464 (2002).
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Alito, J., dissenting
the Final Memorandum. 606 F. Supp. 3d, at 460. This
poi
nt was effectively conceded by the Government's applica-
tion for an emergency stay pending our decision in this case.
The Government argued that the Final Memorandum was
needed to guide prosecutorial discretion, Application 38–39,
and if the District Court's order were ineffectual, that would
not be true. For these reasons, the harm resulting from the
Final Memorandum is redressed by setting aside the Final
Memorandum.
As to the concurrence's second argument—that the APA's
“set aside” language may not permit vacatur—the concur-
rence acknowledges that this would be a sea change in ad-
ministrative law as currently practiced in the lower courts.
Ante, at 701 (opinion of Gorsuch, J.); see, e. g., Data Market-
ing Partnership, LP v. United States Dept. of Labor, 45
F. 4th 846, 859 (CA5 2022) (“The default rule is that vacatur
is the appropriate remedy” under the APA); United Steel v.
Mine Safety and Health Admin., 925 F. 3d 1279, 1287 (CADC
2019) (“The ordinary practice is to vacate unlawful agency
action”).
7
We did not grant review on this very consequen-
tial question, and I would not reach out to decide it in a case
in which Biden v. Texas resolves the issue of redressability.
To be clear, I would be less troubled than I am today if
Justice Gorsuch's concurrence had commanded a majority.
At least then, Congress would be free to amend § 1252(f ).
But the majority reaches out and redefnes our understand-
ing of the constitutional limits on otherwise-available law-
suits. It is to this misunderstanding that I now turn.
7
Our decision three years ago in Department of Homeland Security v.
Regents of Univ. of Cal., 591 U. S. ––– (2020), appears to have assumed
that the APA authorizes this common practice. We held that the rescis-
sion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program had to be
“vacated” because DHS had violated the procedures required by the APA.
Id., at –––. If the court in that case had lacked the authority to set aside
the rule adopting the program, there would have been no need to examine
the suffciency of DHS's procedures.
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III
The
majority adopts the remarkable rule that injuries
from an executive decision not to arrest or prosecute, even
in a civil case, are generally not “cognizable.” Ante, at 676
(internal quotation marks omitted). Its reasoning has three
failings. First, it fails to engage with contrary precedent
that is squarely on point. Second, it lacks support in the
cases on which it relies. Third, the exceptions (or possible
exceptions) that it notes do nothing to allay concern about
the majority's break from our established test for Article III
standing. I address each of these problems in turn.
A
Prior to today's decision, it was established law that plain-
tiffs who suffer a traditional injury resulting from an agency
“decision not to proceed” with an enforcement action have
Article III standing. Federal Election Comm'n v. Akins,
524 U. S. 11, 19 (1998). The obvious parallel to the case be-
fore us is Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U. S. 497 (2007), which
has been called “the most important environmental law case
ever decided by the Court.” R. Lazarus, The Rule of Five:
Making Climate History at the Supreme Court 1 (2020). In
that prior case, Massachusetts challenged the Environmental
Protection Agency's failure to use its civil enforcement pow-
ers to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that allegedly
injured the Commonwealth. Massachusetts argued that it
was harmed because the accumulation of greenhouse gases
would lead to higher temperatures; higher temperatures
would cause the oceans to rise; and rising sea levels would
cause the Commonwealth to lose some of its dry land. The
Court noted that Massachusetts had a “quasi-sovereign in-
teres[t]” in avoiding the loss of territory and that our federal-
ist system had stripped the Commonwealth of “certain sov-
ereign prerogatives” that it could have otherwise employed
to defend its interests. Massachusetts, 549 U. S., at 519–
520. Proclaiming that Massachusetts' standing claim was
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Alito, J., dissenting
entitled to “special solicitude,” the Court held that the Com-
monwea
lth had standing. Id., at 520.
The reasoning in that case applies with at least equal force
in the case at hand. In Massachusetts v. EPA, the Court
suggested that allowing Massachusetts to protect its sover-
eign interests through litigation compensated for its inability
to protect those interests by the means that would have been
available had it not entered the Union. In the present case,
Texas's entry into the Union stripped it of the power that it
undoubtedly enjoyed as a sovereign nation to police its bor-
ders and regulate the entry of aliens. The Constitution and
federal immigration laws have taken away most of that
power, but the statutory provisions at issue in this case af-
ford the State at least some protection—in particular by pre-
venting the State and its residents from bearing the costs,
fnancial and non-fnancial, inficted by the release of certain
dangerous criminal aliens. Our law on standing should not
deprive the State of even that modest protection. We
should not treat Texas less favorably than Massachusetts.
And even if we do not view Texas's standing argument with
any “special solicitude,” we should at least refrain from
treating it with special hostility by failing to apply our stand-
ard test for Article III standing.
Despite the clear parallel with this case and the States'
heavy reliance on Massachusetts throughout their briefng,
the majority can only spare a passing footnote for that im-
portant precedent. Ante, at 685, n. 6; see Brief for Respond-
ents 11, 12, 14, 16–18, 23; see also Brief for Arizona and 17
Other States as Amici Curiae 7–12. It frst declines to say
Massachusetts was correctly decided and references the
“disagreements that some may have” with that decision.
Ante, at 685, n. 6. But it then concludes that Massachusetts
“does not control” since the decision itself refers to “ `key
differences between a denial of a petition for rulemaking and
an agency's decision not to initiate an enforcement action,' ”
with the latter “ `not ordinarily subject to judicial review.' ”
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An te, at 685, n. 6 (quoti ng 549 U. S., at 527) (emphasis
added).
The
problem with this argument is that the portion of
Massachusetts to which the footnote refers deals not with
its key Article III holding, but with the scope of review that
is “ordinarily” available under the statutory scheme. Im-
portantly, Massachusetts frames its statement about declin-
ing enforcement as restating the rule of Heckler v. Chaney,
470 U. S. 821 (1985). See 549 U. S., at 527. And as the
Court acknowledges when it invokes Heckler directly, that
decision is not about standing; it is about the interpretation
of the statutory exception to APA review for actions “com-
mitted to agency discretion by law.” 5 U. S. C. § 701(a)(2);
see 470 U. S., at 823; ante, at 682–683. And even in that
context, Heckler expressly contemplates that any “presump-
tion” of discretion to withhold enforcement can be rebutted
by an express statutory limitation of discretion—which is
exactly what we have here. 470 U. S., at 832–833.
So rather than answering questions about this case, the
majority's footnote on Massachusetts raises more questions
about Massachusetts itself—most importantly, has this mon-
umental decision been quietly interred? Cf. ante, at 688–
689 (Gorsuch, J., concurring in judgment).
Massachusetts v. EPA is not the only relevant precedent
that the Court brushes aside. “[I]t is well established that
[this Court] has an independent obligation to assure that
standing exists, regardless of whether it is challenged by any
of the parties.” Summers v. Earth Island Institute, 555
U. S. 488, 499 (2009). Yet in case after case, with that obli-
gation in mind, we have not questioned the standing of
States that brought suit under the APA to compel civil
enforcement.
In Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home
v. Pennsylvania, 591 U. S. ––– (2020), two States sued under
the APA and sought to compel the Department of Health and
Human Services to cease exercising regulatory enforcement
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discretion that exempted certain religious employers from
c
ompliance with a contraceptive-coverage mandate. Id.,
at ––– – –––. The issue of the States' standing was dis-
cussed at length in the decision below, see Pennsylvania v.
President United States, 930 F. 3d 543, 561–565 (CA3 2019),
and in this Court, no Justice suggested that the Constitution
foreclosed standing simply because the States were com-
plaining of “the Executive Branch's . . . enforcement choices”
regarding third parties. Ante, at 679.
Just last Term in Biden v. Texas, two States argued that
their spending on the issuance of driver's licenses and the
provision of healthcare for illegal immigrants suffced to es-
tablish Article III standing and thus enabled them to sue
to compel enforcement of a detain-or-return mandate. See
Texas v. Biden, 20 F. 4th 928, 970–971 (CA5 2021). The
Court of Appeals held that the States had standing, ibid.,
and the majority in this Court, despite extended engagement
with other jurisdictional questions, never hinted that Arti-
cle III precluded the States' suit. 597 U. S., at ––– – –––.
If the new rule adopted by the Court in this case is sound,
these decisions and others like them were all just wasted
ink. I understand that what we have called “ `drive-by ju-
risdictional rulings' ” are not precedents, see Arbaugh v.
Y & H Corp., 546 U. S. 500, 511 (2006), but the Court should
not use a practice of selective silence to accept or reject
prominently presented standing arguments on inconsistent
grounds.
B
Examination of the precedents the majority invokes only
underscores the defciencies in its analysis.
8
The majority
says that the “leading precedent” supporting its holding is
8
The Court also appeals to “historical experience” and “longstanding
historical practice.” Ante, at 678, 686 (internal quotation marks omitted).
I do not take this to be an argument independent from the case law cited,
since no history is discussed apart from those cases (all but one from
after 1964).

726 UNITED
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Alito, J., dissenting
Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U. S. 614 (1973). Ante,
at
677. But as Justice Barrett notes, this Court has al-
ready defnitively explained that the suit to compel prosecu-
tion in Linda R. S. was rejected “because of the unlikelihood
that the relief requested would redress appellant's claimed
injury.” Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study
Group, Inc., 438 U. S. 59, 79, n. 24 (1978); see ante, at 705
(opinion concurring in judgment).
The Court notes in a quick parenthetical that the “Linda
R. S. principle” was once “cit[ed] . . . in [the] immigration
context” in Sure-Tan, Inc. v. NLRB, 467 U. S. 883, 897 (1984),
ante, at 677. But Sure-Tan's single “[c]f.” cite to Linda R.
S. provides the Court no help. 467 U. S., at 897. Sure-Tan
only rejected (quite reasonably) any standalone “cognizable
interest in procuring enforcement of the immigration laws”
by a party who lacked any “personal interest.” Ibid. (em-
phasis added). And it did so, not as part of a standing analy-
sis, but as part of its explanation for rejecting two employ-
ers' attempt to asser t that seek i ng to have employees
deported as retaliation for union activity was “an aspect of
their First Amendment right `to petition the Government for
a redress of grievances.' ” Id., at 896.
After these two inapposite precedents, the majority's au-
thority gets even weaker. I agree with Justice Barrett
that neither Heckler nor Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U. S.
748 (2005), has real relevance here. Ante, at 707–708. Cas-
tle Rock considered the “deep-rooted nature of law-enforce-
ment discretion” as a tool for interpreting a statute, not as
a constitutional standing rule. 545 U. S., at 761. And as
explained above, Heckler is not about standing and only
states a presumptive rule. The Court's remaining authori-
ties are likewise consistent with the understanding that
prosecution decisions are “generally committed to an
agency's absolute discretion” unless the relevant law rebuts
the “presumption.” Heckler, 470 U. S., at 831 (emphasis
added). For example, TransUnion states that it is only
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when “unharmed plaintiffs” are before the Court that Article
III
forecloses interference with the “discretion of the Execu-
tive Branch.” 594 U. S., at ––– (emphasis deleted).
In sum, all of these authorities point, not to the majority's
new rule, but to the same ordinary questions we ask in every
case—whether the plaintiff has a concrete, traceable, and re-
dressable injury.
C
Despite the majority's capacious understanding of execu-
tive discretion, today's opinion assures the reader that the
decision “do[es] not suggest that federal courts may never
entertain cases involving the Executive Branch's alleged fail-
ure to make more arrests or bring more prosecutions,” de-
spite its otherwise broad language covering the “exercise of
enforcement discretion over whether to arrest or prosecute.”
Ante, at 677, 681. The majority lists fve categories of cases
in which a court would—or at least might—have Article III
jurisdiction to entertain a challenge to arrest or prosecution
policies, but this list does nothing to allay concern about the
Court's new path. The Court does not identify any charac-
teristics that are shared by all these categories and that dis-
tinguish them from cases in which it would not fnd standing.
In addition, the Court is unwilling to say that cases in four
of these fve categories are actually exempted from its gen-
eral rule, and the one remaining category is exceedingly
small. I will discuss these categories one by one.
First, the majority distinguishes “selective-prosecution”
suits by a plaintiff “to prevent his or her own prosecution,”
ante, at 681. But such claims are ordinarily brought as de-
fenses in ongoing prosecutions, as in the cases the Court
cites, and are rarely brought in standalone actions where a
plaintiff must prove standing. This category is therefore lit-
tle more than a footnote to the Court's general rule.
Second, the majority grants that “the standing analysis
might differ when Congress elevates de facto injuries to the
status of legally cognizable injuries,” and it hypothesizes a
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situation in which Congress “(i) specifcally authorize[s] suits
agai
nst the Executive Branch by a defned set of plaintiffs
who have suffered concrete harms from executive under-
enforcement and (ii) specifcally authorize[s] the Judiciary to
enter appropriate orders requiring additional arrests or
prosecutions by the Executive Branch.” Ante, at 681–682
(emphasis added). It is puzzling why the presence or ab-
sence of such a statute should control the question of stand-
ing under the Constitution. We have said that the enact-
ment of a statute may help us to determine in marginal cases
whether an injury is suffciently concrete and particularized
to satisfy the frst prong of our three-part standing test.
Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U. S. 330, 341 (2016). But once
it is posited that a plaintiff has personally suffered a “de
facto” injury, i. e., an injury in fact, it is hard to see why the
presence or absence of a statute authorizing suit has a bear-
ing on the question whether the court has Article III juris-
diction as opposed to the question whether the plaintiff has
a cause of action. In the end, however, none of this may
matter because the majority suggests that such a statute
might be unconstitutional. Ante, at 682, and n. 4.
Third, the majority tells us that the standing outcome
“might change” if the Federal Government “wholly aban-
doned its statutory responsibilities,” but that statement is
both equivocal and vague. Ante, at 682 (emphasis added).
Under what circumstances might the Court say that the Fed-
eral Government has “wholly abandoned” its enforcement
duties? Suppose the Federal Government announced that
it would obey 80% of the immigration laws or 70% of the
environmental laws. Would the Court say that it had
“wholly abandoned” enforcement of these bodies of law?
What would happen if the Final Memorandum in this case
had directed DHS agents not to arrest anyone convicted of
any covered crime other than murder? DHS would still be
enforcing the arrest mandate as to one of the many covered
crimes. Would this only-murder policy qualify as complete
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Alito, J., dissenting
abandonment? And why should the ability of a particular
par
ty to seek legal redress for an injury turn on the number
of others harmed by the challenged enforcement policy?
Standing is assessed plaintiff by plaintiff. The majority has
no answers, and in the end, it cannot even bring itself to
commit to this complete-abandonment exception. It says
only that “the standing calculus might” or “arguably could”
change. Ibid. (emphasis added).
Fourth, the Court says that a plaintiff might have standing
to challenge an “Executive Branch's arrest or prosecution
priorities and the Executive Branch's provision of legal ben-
efts or legal status . . . because the challenged policy might
implicate more than simply the Executive's traditional en-
forcement discretion.” Ante, at 683. Exactly what this
means is not easy to ascertain. One possibility is that the
majority is talking about a complaint that asserts separate
claims based on the grant or denial of benefts, the grant or
denial of legal status, and harms resulting from non-enforce-
ment of a statutory mandate. In that event, standing with
respect to each claim would have to be analyzed separately.
Another possibility is that the majority is referring to a
claim asserting that non-enforcement of a statutory require-
ment requiring the arrest or prosecution of third parties re-
sulted in the plaintiff's loss of benefts or legal status. Such
a situation is not easy to imagine, and the majority cites no
case that falls within this category. But if such a case were
to arise, there is no reason why it should not be analyzed
under our standard three-pronged test.
Fifth, and fnally, the majority states that “policies govern-
ing the continued detention of noncitizens who have already
been arrested arguably might raise a different standing
question than arrest or prosecution policies.” Ibid. (empha-
sis added). The majority provides no explanation for this
(noncommittal) distinction, and in any event, as the majority
acknowledges, the States in this case challenged noncompli-
ance with the § 1231(a)(2) detention mandate in addition to
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730 UNITED
STATES v. TEXAS
Alito, J., dissenting
the § 1226(c) arrest requirement. Ante, at 674, 685. The
Cour
t points to what it sees as a “represent[ation]” by the
Solicitor General that the Final Memorandum does not affect
“continued detention of noncitizens already in federal
custody. ” Ante, at 683, n. 5. But as Justice Barrett
notes, the Government argued that when it chooses not to
remove someone under the Final Memorandum's guidance,
its mandatory detention obligation ends—meaning it is as-
serting discretion over continued detention. Ante, at 706
(opinion concurring in judgment).
In any event, arrest policy cannot be divided from deten-
tion policy in this case. When a person is arrested, he or
she is detained for at least some period of time, and under
the detainer system involved here, “arrest” often simply
means transferring an immigrant from state custody to fed-
eral custody. As best I can tell, the majority's distinction
between arrest and detention is made solely to avoid the ob-
vious inference that our decision last Term in Biden v. Texas
should have dismissed the case for lack of standing, without
analyzing “the Government's detention obligations.” 597
U. S., at –––.
In sum, with the exception of cases in the frst (very small)
category (civil cases involving selective-prosecution claims),
the majority does not identify any category of cases that it
would defnitely except from its general rule. In addition,
category two confates the question of constitutional stand-
ing with the question whether the plaintiff has a cause of
action; category three is hopelessly vague; category four is
incomprehensible; and category fve actually encompasses
the case before us.
IV
The Court declares that its decision upholds “[o]ur consti-
tutional system of separation of powers,” ante, at 681, but as
I said at the outset, the decision actually damages that sys-
tem by improperly infating the power of the Executive and
cutting back the power of Congress and the authority of the

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Alito, J., dissenting
Judiciary. And it renders States already laboring under the
effec
ts of massive illegal immigration even more helpless.
Our Constitution gives the President important powers,
and the precise extent of some of them has long been the
subject of contention, but it has been widely accepted that
“the President's power reaches `its lowest ebb' when he con-
travenes the express will of Congress, `for what is at stake
is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system.' ”
Zivotofsky v. Kerry, 576 U. S. 1, 61 (2015) (Roberts, C. J.,
dissenting) (quoting Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Saw-
yer, 343 U. S. 579, 637–638 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring)).
That is the situation here. To put the point simply, Con-
gress enacted a law that requires the apprehension and de-
tention of certain illegal aliens whose release, it thought,
would endanger public safety. The Secretary of DHS does
not agree with that categorical requirement. He prefers a
more fexible policy. And the Court's answer today is that
the Executive's policy choice prevails unless Congress, by
withholding funds, refusing to confrm Presidential nomi-
nees, threatening impeachment and removal, etc., can win a
test of strength. Relegating Congress to these disruptive
measures radically alters the balance of power between Con-
gress and the Executive, as well as the allocation of authority
between the Congress that enacts a law and a later Congress
that must go to war with the Executive if it wants that law
to be enforced.
9
What the majority has done is to apply Oliver Wendell
Holmes's bad-man theory of the law to the separation of pow-
9
The majority suggests that any law that constrains an Executive's “en-
forcement discretion” is “highly unusual,” and notes that the States cite
no “similarly worded federal laws” that “require the Executive Branch to
make arrests or bring prosecutions” in other, non-immigration contexts.
Ante, at 684. But there is nothing peculiar about Congress's reserving its
mandates for an area—immigration—where it both exercises particularly
broad authority, Fiallo v. Bell, 430 U. S. 787, 792 (1977), and identifes a
unique “wholesale failure” by the enforcement authority, Demore v. Kim,
538 U. S. 510, 518 (2003).
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Alito, J., dissenting
ers. Under Holmes's theory, as popularly understood, the
law
consists of those things that a bad man cannot get away
with.
10
Similarly, the majority's understanding of the “exec-
utive Power” seems to be that a President can disobey sta-
tutory commands unless Congress, by fexing its muscles,
forces capitulation. That is not the Constitution's concep-
tion of “the executive Power.” Art. II, § 1. The Constitu-
tion, instead, requires a President to “take Care that the
Laws be faithfully executed.” § 3 (emphasis added).
Neither the Solicitor General nor the majority has cited
any support for the proposition that a President has the
power to disobey statutes that require him to take enforce-
ment actions, and there is strong historical evidence to the
contrary.
11
The majority's conception of Presidential au-
thority smacks of the powers that English monarchs claimed
prior to the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, namely, the power
to suspend the operation of existing statutes, and to grant
dispensations from compliance with statutes.
12
After James
II was deposed, that changed. The English Bill of Rights
of 1689 emphatically rejected “the pretended Power of Sus-
pending of Laws or the Execution of Laws by Rega[l] Au-
thority without Consent of Parl[i]ament” and “the pretended
Power of Dispensing with Laws or the Execution of Laws
by Rega[l] Authorit[y] as it ha[s] bee[n] assumed and exer-
cised of late.”
13
10
See O. Holmes, The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. L. Rev. 457, 459–460
(1897).
11
See Z. Price, Enforcement Discretion and Executive Duty, 67 Vand.
L. Rev. 671, 689–696 (2014); R. Delahunty & J. Yoo, Dream On: The Obama
Administration's Nonenforcement of Immigration Laws, the DREAM Act,
and the Take Care Clause, 91 Texas L. Rev. 781, 797–804 (2013) (Dela-
hunty & Yoo, Dream On); see also E. Biber, Two Sides of the Same Coin:
Judicial Review of Administrative Agency Action and Inaction, 26 Va. Env.
L. J. 461, 472–474 (2008).
12
See R. Reinstein, The Limits of Executive Power, 59 Am. U. L. Rev.
259, 277–281 (2009) (Reinstein, Limits).
13
An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling
the Succession of the Crown (Bill of Rights), 1 W. & M., Sess. 2, c. 2 (1689).
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733
Alito, J., dissenting
By the time of the American Revolution, British monarchs
had
long abandoned the power to resist laws enacted by Par-
liament,
14
but the Declaration of Independence charged
George III with exercising those powers with respect to co-
lonial enactments. One of the leading charges against him
was that he had “forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of
immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in
their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when
so suspended, . . . ha[d] utterly neglected to attend to
them.”
15
By 1787, six State Constitutions contained provisions pro-
hibiting the suspension of laws,
16
and at the Constitutional
Convention, a proposal to grant the President suspending
authority was unanimously defeated.
17
Many scholars have
concluded that the Take Care Clause was meant to repudiate
that authority.
18
See 1 Works of James Wilson 399, 440
14
The last time a British monarch withheld assent to a bill enacted by
Parliament was in 1708. 18 HL J. 506 (Mar. 11, 1708).
15
Declaration of Independence ¶4. In 1774, Jefferson had addressed the
subject of this charge, explaining that British monarchs “for several ages
past” had “declined the exercise of this power in that part of [the] empire
called Great Britain” but had resumed the practice in the American Colo-
nies and had “rejected laws of the most salutary tendency,” such as one
forbidding the importation of slaves. T. Jefferson, A Summary View of
the Rights of British America (1774), https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_
century/jeffsumm.asp. See G. Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson's Dec-
laration of Independence 69 (1978).
16
See generally S. Calabresi, S. Agudo, & K. Dore, State Bills of Rights
in 1787 and 1791: What Individual Rights Are Really Deeply Rooted in
American History and Tradition? 85 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1451, 1534–1535
(2012) (reporting that six State Constitutions had such provisions in 1787,
rising to eight by 1791).
17
1 The Records of the Federa l Conventi on of 1787, pp. 103 –104
(M. Farrand ed. 1966). See generally R. Beeman, Plain, Honest Men: The
Making of the American Constitution 140 (2009) (describing debate over
the executive veto).
18
See, e. g., Delahunty & Yoo, Dream On 803–804; Reinstein, Limits
281; S. Prakash, The Essential Meaning of Executive Power, 2003 U. Ill.
L. Rev. 701, 726, n. 113 (2003); C. May, Presidential Defance of “Uncon-
stitutional” Laws: Reviving the Royal Prerogative 16, and n. 58 (1998);
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Alito, J., dissenting
(R. McCloskey ed. 1967) (describing Clause as providing that
the
President holds “authority, not to make, or alter, or dis-
pense with the laws, but to execute and act the laws”).
Early decisions are inconsistent with the understanding of
Executive Power that appears to animate the majority. In
1806, Justice Patterson, while presiding over a criminal trial,
rejected the argument that the President could authorize the
defendant to violate the law. United States v. Smith, 27
F. Cas. 1192, 1201 (No. 16,342) (CC NY 1806). He concluded:
“The president of the United States cannot control the
statute, nor dispense with its execution, and still less
can he authorize a person to do what the law forbids.
If he could, it would render the execution of the laws
dependent on his will and pleasure; which is a doctrine
that has not been set up, and will not meet with any
supporters in our government. In this particular, the
law is paramount.” Id., at 1230.
In Kendall v. United States ex rel. Stokes, 12 Pet. 524
(1838), the full Court rejected the President's claim that he
had the authority to disregard a statutory duty to pay cer-
tain sums to a government contractor: “To contend that the
obligation imposed on the President to see the laws faithfully
executed, implies a power to forbid their execution, is a novel
construction of the constitution, and entirely inadmissible.”
Id., at 613. This Court made the obvious connection to the
separation of powers: “vesting in the President a dispensing
power” would result in “clothing the President with a power
entirely to control the legislation of congress, and paralyze
the administration of justice.” Ibid.; see also Offce of Per-
sonnel Management v. Richmond, 496 U. S. 414, 435 (1990)
(White, J., concurring) (citing Kendall to explain that the
“Executive Branch does not have the dispensing power on
R. Reinstein, An Early View of Executive Powers and Privilege: The Trial
of Smith and Ogden, 2 Hastings Const. L. Q. 309, 320–321, n. 50 (1975).
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Alito, J., dissenting
its own” and “should not be granted such a power by judi-
cia
l authorization”).
The original understanding of the scope of the Executive's
prosecutorial discretion was not briefed in this case, and I
am reluctant to express a frm position on the question. But
it is indisputable that we have been provided with no histori-
cal support for the position taken by the Solicitor General or
the majority.
***
This sweeping Executive Power endorsed by today's deci-
sion may at frst be warmly received by champions of a
strong Presidential power, but if Presidents can expand their
powers as far as they can manage in a test of strength with
Congress, presumably Congress can cut executive power as
much as it can manage by wielding the formidable weapons
at its disposal. That is not what the Constitution envisions.
I end with one fnal observation. The majority suggests
that its decision rebuffs an effort to convince us to “ `usurp' ”
the authority of the other branches, but that is not true.
Ante, at 676. We exercise the power conferred by Article
III of the Constitution, and we must be vigilant not to exceed
the limits of our constitutional role. But when we have ju-
risdiction, we have a “virtually unfagging obligation” to ex-
ercise that authority. Colorado River Water Conservation
Dist. v. United States, 424 U. S. 800, 817 (1976). Because
the majority shuns that duty, I must respectfully dissent.
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Reporter’s Note
The attached opinion has been revised to refect the usual publication
and citation style of the United States Reports. The revised pagination
makes available the offcial United States Reports citation in advance of
publication. The syllabus has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions
for the convenience of the reader and constitutes no part of the opinion of
the Court. A list of counsel who argued or fled briefs in this case, and
who were members of the bar of this Court at the time this case was
argued, has been inserted following the syllabus. Other revisions may
include adjustments to formatting, captions, citation form, and any errant
punctuation. The following additional edits were made:
None