Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/609

 502US2$28D 02-10-99 15:12:54 PAGES OPINPGT

Cite as: 502 U. S. 437 (1992)

451

Opinion of the Court

“ ‘We construe 28 U. S. C. § 1251(a)(1), as we do Art. III, § 2, cl. 2, to honor our original jurisdiction but to make it obligatory only in appropriate cases. And the question of what is appropriate concerns, of course, the seriousness and dignity of the claim; yet beyond that it necessarily involves the availability of another forum where there is jurisdiction over the named parties, where the issues tendered may be litigated, and where appropriate relief may be had.’ ” Illinois v. City of Milwaukee, 406 U. S. 91, 93 (1972), quoted in California v. Texas, 457 U. S. 164, 168 (1982). It is beyond peradventure that Wyoming has raised a claim of sufficient “seriousness and dignity.” Oklahoma, acting in its sovereign capacity, passed the Act, which directly affects Wyoming’s ability to collect severance tax revenues, an action undertaken in its sovereign capacity. As such, Wyoming’s challenge under the Commerce Clause precisely “implicates serious and important concerns of federalism fully in accord with the purposes and reach of our original jurisdiction.” Maryland v. Louisiana, 451 U. S., at 744. Indeed, we found it not to be a “waste” of this Court’s time in Maryland v. Louisiana to consider the validity of one State’s “first-use tax” which served, in effect, as a severance tax on gas extracted from areas belonging to the people at large, to the detriment of other States on to whose consumers the tax passed. Ibid. Wyoming’s claim here is no less substantial, and touches on its direct injury rather than on any interest as parens patriae. Oklahoma makes much of the fact that the mining companies affected in Wyoming could bring suit raising the Commerce Clause challenge, as private parties aggrieved by state action often do. But cf. Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Comm’n, supra. For reasons unknown, however, they have chosen neither to intervene in this action nor to file their own, whether in state or