Page:United States v. Texas (2023).pdf/41

Rh and transforms it into one about standing. See (opinion of )

The Court leans, too, on principles set forth in Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U. S. 821 (1985). , . But, again, Heckler was not about standing. It addressed a different question: “the extent to which a decision of an administrative 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 provisions do not apply “to the extent” that “agency action is committed 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 transform 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 conflation of Heckler with standing doctrine is likely to cause confusion. See (analogizing “Article III cases” to “Administrative Procedure Act cases”).

The Court weaves together multiple doctrinal strands to create a rule that is not only novel, but also in tension with other decisions. See (opinion of ). In my view, this case should be resolved on the familiar ground that it must be “ ‘likely,’ as opposed to merely ‘speculative,’ ” that any injury “will be ‘redressed by a favorable