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Rh Rh deciding the federal questions, is sufficient to give the Court jurisdiction to review that decision"). By striking down §3 of DOMA as unconstitutional, the Second Circuit effectively "held for naught" an Act of Congress. Just as the state-senator-petitioners in Coleman were necessary parties to the amendment's ratification, the House of Representatives was a necessary party to DOMA's passage; indeed, the House's vote would have been sufficient to prevent DOMA's repeal if the Court had not chosen to execute that repeal judicially.

Both the United States and the Court-appointed amicus err in arguing that Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811 (1997), is to the contrary. In that case, the Court held that Members of Congress who had voted "nay" to the Line Item Veto Act did not have standing to challenge that statute in federal court. Raines is inapposite for two reasons. First, Raines dealt with individual Members of Congress and specifically pointed to the individual Members' lack of institutional endorsement as a sign of their standing problem: "We attach some importance to the fact that appellees have not been authorized to represent their respective Houses of Congress in this action, and indeed both Houses actively oppose their suit." Id., at 829; see also ibid., n. 10 (citing cases to the effect that "members of collegial bodies do not have standing to perfect an appeal the body itself has declined to take" (internal quotation marks omitted)).

Second, the Members in Raines—unlike the state senators in Coleman—were not the pivotal figures whose votes would have caused the Act to fail absent some challenged action. Indeed, it is telling that Raines characterized Coleman as standing "for the proposition that legislators whose votes would have been sufficient to defeat (or enact) a specific legislative Act have standing to sue if that legislative action goes into effect (or does not go into effect), on the ground that their votes have been completely