Page:Gohmert v. Pence (6 20-cv-660-JDK) (2021) Order.pdf/5

 (“If a dispute is not a proper case or controversy, the courts have no business deciding it, or expounding the law in the course of doing so.”). Article III of the U.S. Constitution limits federal courts to deciding only “cases” or “controversies,” which ensures that the judiciary “respects ‘the proper—and properly limited—role of the courts in a democratic society.’” DaimlerChrysler, 547 U.S. at 341 (quoting Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 750 (1984)); see also Raines, 521 U.S. at 828 (quoting United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 192 (1974)) (“Our regime contemplates a more restricted role for Article III courts … ‘not some amorphous general supervision of the operations of government.’”).

“[A]n essential and unchanging part of the case-or-controversy requirement of Article III” is that the plaintiff has standing. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560. The standing requirement is not subject to waiver and requires strict compliance. E.g., Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 349 n.1 (1996); Raines, 521 U.S. at 819. A standing inquiry is “especially rigorous” where the merits of the dispute would require the Court to determine whether an action taken by one of the other two branches of the Federal Government is unconstitutional. Raines, 521 U.S. at 819–20 (citing Bender v. Williamsport Area Sch. Dist., 475 U.S. 534, 542 (1986), and Valley Forge Christian Coll. v. Ams. United for Separation of Church & St., Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 473–74 (1982)). This is because “the law of Art. III standing is built on a single basic idea—the idea of separation of powers.” Allen, 468 U.S. at 752, abrogated on other grounds by Lexmark Int’l, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 572 U.S. 118, 128 (2014). Article III standing “enforces the Constitution’s case-or-controversy requirement.”