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![handle is hein.crs/crsmthaafnb0001 and id is 1 raw text is: CRS Reports & Analysis
Legal Sidebar
District Court Holds House has Standing to Pursue
Portions of ACA Lawsuit
09/11/2015
A number of lower courts have previously held that a single house of Congress has tanding to enforce a subpoena
through a civil lawsuit when that lawsuit is authorized by resolution and seeks to vindicate the institution's oversight
powers. RarLI, however, has the House or Senate been accorded standing to sue the executive branch in a claim arising
outside of the subpoena enforcement context. [ S. House of Revresentatives v. Burwell represents just such a case. In
a decision that may have a significant impact on the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches,
the U.S. District Court for D.C. has held that the House has standing to challenge expenditures of funds made without
an appropriation from Congress in violation of the Constitution's ommand that No Money shall be drawn from the
Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law, but does not have standing to challenge the
Administration's implementation, interpretation, or execution of statutory provisions. In short, the decision both
extends and limits the ability of the House to unilaterally sue the executive branch.
In Burwell, the House made two basic claims relating to its contention that executive branch officials had failed to act
consistently with their duties under the Constitution or federal law in implementing the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act (ACA). First, that the Administration had violated Article I, § 9 of the Constitution by paying
ost-sharing-subaidies to insurers in the exchanges established under the ACA without a valid appropriation of funds by
Congress for those purposes, and second, that the Administration had violated the ACA, as well as the Constitution, by
delaying enforcement of the eM.lover mandate. The chief threshold question for the district court was whether the
House had standing to bring these claims. The doctrine of standing is a mix of contitutional requirements, derived
from the casQ or cntrovsy provision in Aricle III, and prudenfal onsideraliom, which are judicially created. The
constitutionally based elements require that plaintiffs have suffered a personal injury-in-fact, which is actual, imminent,
concrete and particularized. The injury must also be fairly traceable to the defendant's conduct and likely to be
redressed by the relief requested from the court. The failure to satisfy these standing requirements is fatal to the
litigation and will result in the claim's dismissal.
In Burwell, the determination of whether the House had standing to pursue the lawsuit hinged principally on the
question of whether the body could show that it, as an institution, had suffered a concrete and particularized inj=ur.
The c~ui began by noting that the fact that the lawsuit was authorized by the whole House, clearly distinguishes this
case from past cases in which Members of Congress, acting in their individual capacities, were denied standing to
challenge executive action. Burwell involved an institutional plaintiff asserting an institutional injury rather than an
individual member asserting an injury that is wholly abstract and widely dispersed. The court then considered
whether the injuries alleged would inflict a concrete, particular harm upon the House for which it has standing to seek
redress in this [c]ourt.
At this point, the LuU was entering relatively uncharted territory: does the House suffer a constitutionally adequate
injury when the executive branch spends money without an appropriation? Or, similarly, when the Administration fails
to execute the terms of a statute? With respect to the appropriations question, the court concluded that the House does
suffer an adequate injury when funds are drawn from the Treasury without an appropriation, but only to the extent that
it seeks to remedy constitutional violations. The court accorded great significance to Congress's appropriation power,
identifying the power of the purse as the source of virtually all of the House's political power. Consistent with the](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.crs/crsmthaafnb0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)