Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/634

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

476

WYOMING v. OKLAHOMA Thomas, J., dissenting

Wyoming, which in turn supposedly decreases the tax revenues Wyoming collects from the companies when they extract the coal. Plainly, the primary dispute here is not between the States of Wyoming and Oklahoma, but between the private Wyoming mining companies and the State of Oklahoma, whose statute reduced the companies’ sales to Oklahoma utilities. It is true, as the Court notes, ante, at 451, that Oklahoma passed the statute in its sovereign capacity and that Wyoming collects taxes in its sovereign capacity. That States act qua States is certainly very relevant in assessing the “seriousness and dignity” of a claim. See Maryland v. Louisiana, supra, at 764–766 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). But it is also critical to examine the extent to which the sovereigns actually have clashed. Cf. Arizona v. New Mexico, supra, at 797–798 (“In denying the State of Arizona leave to file, we are not unmindful that the legal incidence of [the challenged action by New Mexico] is upon the utilities”). In my view, an entirely derivative injury of the type alleged by Wyoming here—even if it met minimal standing requirements—would not justify the exercise of discretionary original jurisdiction. Additionally, of course, Wyoming has advanced no reason why the affected mining companies (hardly bashful litigants) did not or could not themselves challenge the Oklahoma statute in another, more convenient, forum. The lower federal courts and the state courts are readily available as appropriate forums “in which the issues tendered here may be litigated.” Id., at 797 (emphasis in original). The implications of the Court’s novel theory that taxcollection injury alone justifies exercise of original jurisdiction are, in my view, both sweeping and troubling. An economic burden imposed by one State on another State’s taxpayers will frequently affect the other State’s fisc. (That will virtually always be the case, for example, with respect to income taxes; if State A takes actions that reduce the income of the taxpayers of State B, State B will collect less