OPINION OF THE COURT
BOND V. UNITED STATES
564 U. S. ____ (2011)
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
NO. 09-1227
CAROL ANNE BOND, PETITIONER
v. UNITED
STATES
on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the third circuit
[June 16, 2011]
Justice Kennedy delivered the
opinion of the Court.
This case presents the question
whether a person indicted for violating a federal statute has
standing to challenge its validity on grounds that, by enacting it,
Congress exceeded its powers under the Constitution, thus intruding
upon the sovereignty and authority of the States.
The indicted defendant, petitioner here,
sought to ar- gue the invalidity of the statute. She relied on the
Tenth Amendment, and, by extension, on the premise that Congress
exceeded its powers by enacting it in contravention of basic
federalism principles. The statute, 18 U. S. C. §229, was
enacted to comply with a treaty; but petitioner contends that, at
least in the present instance, the treaty cannot be the source of
congressional power to regulate or prohibit her conduct.
The Court of Appeals held that because a State
was not a party to the federal criminal proceeding, petitioner had
no standing to challenge the statute as an infringement upon the
powers reserved to the States. Having concluded that petitioner
does have standing to challenge the federal statute on these
grounds, this Court now reverses that determination. The merits of
petitioner’s challenge to the statute’s validity are to be
considered, in the first instance, by the Court of Appeals on
remand and are not addressed in this opinion.
I
This case arises from a bitter
personal dispute, leading to the criminal acts charged here.
Petitioner Carol Anne Bond lived outside Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. After dis-covering that her close friend was pregnant
and that the father was Bond’s husband, Bond sought revenge. Bond
subjected the woman to a campaign of harassing telephone calls and
letters, acts that resulted in a crimi-nal conviction on a minor
state charge. Bond persisted in her hostile acts, placing caustic
substances on objects the woman was likely to touch, including her
mailbox, car door handle, and front doorknob. Bond’s victim
suffered a minor burn on her hand and contacted federal
investigators, who identified Bond as the perpetrator.
Bond was indicted in the United
States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for,
among other offenses, two counts of violating §229. Section 229
forbids knowing possession or use of any chemical that “can cause
death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or
animals” where not intended for a “peaceful purpose.” §§229(a);
229F(1); (7); (8). The statute was en-acted as part of the Chemical
Weapons Convention Implementation Act of 1998, 112 Stat. 2681–856,
22 U. S. C. §6701
et seq.; 18 U. S. C. §229
et seq. The Act implements provisions of the Convention on
the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use
of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, a treaty the United
States ratified in 1997.
In the District Court, Bond moved to dismiss
the §229 charges, contending the statute was beyond Congress’
constitutional authority to enact. The District Court denied the
motion. Bond entered a conditional plea of guilty, reserving the
right to appeal the ruling on the validity of the statute. She was
sentenced to six years in prison.
In the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit,
Bond renewed her challenge to the statute, citing, among other
authorities, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Court of
Appeals asked for supplemental briefs on the question whether Bond
had standing to raise the Tenth Amendment as a ground for
invalidating a federal statute in the absence of a State’s
participation in the proceedings.
In its supplemental brief in the Court of
Appeals, the Government took the position that Bond did not have
standing. The Court of Appeals agreed. 581 F. 3d 128
(2009).
When Bond sought certiorari, the Government
advised this Court that it had changed its position and that, in
its view, Bond does have standing to challenge the
constitutionality of §229 on Tenth Amendment grounds. See Brief for
United States (filed July 9, 2010). The Court granted certiorari,
562 U. S. ___ (2010), and appointed an
amicus curiae to
defend the judgment of the Court of Appeals. Stephen McAllister, a
member of the bar of this Court, filed an
amicus brief and
presented an oral argument that have been of considerable
assistance to the Court.
II
To conclude that petitioner lacks
standing to challenge a federal statute on grounds that the measure
interferes with the powers reserved to States, the Court of Appeals
relied on a single sentence from this Court’s opinion in
Tennessee Elec. Power Co. v.
TVA,
306 U. S. 118 (1939).
See 581 F. 3d, at 136–138. As the Court of Appeals noted here,
other Courts of Appeals have taken a similar approach.
E.g.,
United States v.
Hacker, 565 F.3d 522, 525–527 (CA8
2009);
Oregon v.
Legal Servs. Corp., 552
F. 3d 965, 971–972 (CA9 2009);
Brooklyn Legal Servs.
Corp. v.
Legal Servs. Corp., 462 F. 3d 219,
234–235 (CA2 2006);
Medeiros v.
Vincent, 431 F.
3d 25, 33–36 (CA1 2005);
United States v.
Parker,
362 F. 3d 1279, 1284–1285 (CA10 2004). That approach is in
tension, if not conflict, with decisions of some other Courts of
Appeals. See
Gillespie v.
Indianapolis, 185
F. 3d 693, 700–704 (CA7 1999);
Metrolina Family Practice
Group, P. A. v.
Sullivan, 767 F. Supp. 1314
(WDNC 1989), aff’d 929 F. 2d 693 (CA4 1991);
Atlanta Gas
Light Co. v.
United States Dept. of Energy, 666
F. 2d 1359, 1368, n. 16 (CA11 1982); see also
United
States v.
Johnson, 632 F. 3d 912, 918–921 (CA5
2011) (reserving issue);
Lomont v.
O’Neill, 285
F. 3d 9, 14, n. 5 (CADC 2002) (same);
Nance v.
EPA, 645 F. 2d 701, 716 (CA9 1981) (same).
Tennessee Electric is
the appropriate place to begin. It should be clear that
Tennessee Electric does not cast doubt on Bond’s standing
for purposes of Article III’s case-or-controversy requirement. This
Court long ago disapproved of the case as authoritative respecting
Article III limitations.
Association of Data Processing Service
Organizations, Inc. v.
Camp,
397 U. S. 150, 152–154
(1970). In the instant case, moreover, it is apparent—and in fact
conceded not only by the Government but also by
amicus—that Article III poses no barrier. One who seeks to
initiate or continue proceedings in federal court must demonstrate,
among other requirements, both standing to obtain the relief
requested, see
Lujan v.
Defenders of Wildlife,
504 U. S. 555,
560–561 (1992), and, in addition, an “ongoing interest in the
dispute” on the part of the opposing party that is sufficient to
establish “concrete adverseness.”
Camreta v.
Greene, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 5)
(internal quotation marks omitted). When those conditions are met,
Article III does not restrict the opposing party’s ability to
object to relief being sought at its expense. The requirement of
Article III standing thus had no bearing upon Bond’s capacity to
assert defenses in the District Court. As for Bond’s standing to
appeal, it is clear Article III’s prerequisites are met. Bond’s
challenge to her conviction and sentence “satisfies the
case-or-controversy requirement, because the incarceration . . .
constitutes a concrete injury, caused by the conviction and
redressable by invalidation of the conviction.”
Spencer v.
Kemna,
523 U.
S. 1, 7 (1998).
To resolve the case, this Court must consider
next whether
Tennessee Electric is irrelevant with respect
to prudential rules of standing as well. The question in
Tennessee Electric was whether a group of private power
companies could bring suit to enjoin the federally chartered
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) from producing and selling
electric power. It was conceded that competition from the TVA would
“inflict substantial damage” upon the power companies. 306 U. S.,
at 137. According to the companies, the federal statute authorizing
the creation and operation of the TVA was invalid because, among
other reasons, it exceeded the powers of the National Government in
violation of the Tenth Amendment.
Declining to reach the merits, the Court
concluded the power companies’ lawsuit should be dismissed. It
explained that the suit was premised on the principle that a person
threatened with injury by conduct “which, but for statutory
authority for its performance, would be a violation of his legal
rights” could request an injunction from a court of equity and by
this means test the validity of the statute.
Ibid. But the
Court concluded that the TVA, even if it were shorn of
congressional statutory authority, had done nothing more than
compete as a supplier of electricity.
Id., at 138. And
since state law did not purport to grant any of the power companies
a monopoly, there was no basis for a suit in which the TVA might be
forced to invoke its congressional authorization.
Id., at
138–143.
In that part of its analysis, and throughout
its opinion, the
Tennessee Electric Court stated that the
problem with the power companies’ suit was a lack of “standing” or
a “cause of action.” It treated those concepts as interchangeable.
E.g.,
id., at 139 (no “standing” because no
“legal cause of complaint”);
id., at 139–140 (no
“standing” without “a cause of action or a right to sue”);
id., at 142 (“no standing,” no “right to sue for an
injunction”);
id., at 144 (no Tenth Amendment “standing”
and no Ninth Amendment “cause of action” for same reasons); see
also Bellia, Article III and the Cause of Action, 89 Iowa
L. Rev. 777, 826–830 (2004).
Even though decisions since
Tennessee
Electric have been careful to use the terms “cause of action”
and “standing” with more precision, the distinct concepts can be
difficult to keep separate. If, for instance, the person alleging
injury is remote from the zone of interests a statute protects,
whether there is a legal injury at all and whether the particular
litigant is one who may assert it can involve similar inquiries.
Steel Co. v.
Citizens for Better Environment,
523 U. S. 83,
96–97, and n. 2 (1998) (noting that statutory standing and the
existence of a cause of action are “closely connected” and
“sometimes identical” questions).
Still, the question whether a plaintiff states
a claim for relief “goes to the merits” in the typical case, not
the justiciability of a dispute,
id., at 92, and
conflation of the two concepts can cause confusion. This is the
case with the Tenth Amendment discussion in
Tennessee
Electric. The
Tennessee Electric Court noted that
“[a] distinct ground upon which standing to maintain the suit is
said to rest is that the acts of the Authority cannot be upheld
without permitting federal regulation of purely local matters
reserved to the states or the people by the Tenth Amendment.” 306
U. S., at 143. The Court rejected the argument, however, concluding
the Tenth Amendment did not give one business a right to keep
another from compet- ing.
Id., at 144. (“The sale of
government property in competition with others is not a violation
of the Tenth Amendment”).
The Court then added the sentence upon which
the Court of Appeals relied in the instant case, the sentence that
has been the source of disagreement among Courts of Appeals:
“As we have seen there is no objection to the
Authority’s operations by the states, and, if this were not so, the
appellants, absent the states or their officers, have no standing
in this suit to raise any question under the amendment.”
Ibid.
The quoted statement was in the context of a
decision which held that business competitors had no legal injury,
and the word standing can be interpreted in that sense. On this
reading, the statement reiterated an earlier point. The statement
explained that the States in which the TVA operated exempted it
from their public utilities regulations; and that even if the
States had not done so and the TVA had violated those regulations,
the regulations were for the States to enforce. See
id.,
at 141–142. They conferred no private right of action on business
competitors. This reading is consistent with the
Tennessee
Electric Court’s use of the term “standing” elsewhere in its
opinion to refer to the existence of a state-law cause of action. A
holding that state utilities regulations did not supply a cause of
action against a competitor is of no relevance to the instant case,
and we need not explore all of its implications. See also
Data
Processing, 397 U. S., at 157–158 (cause of action under the
Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U. S. C. §702, permits suit
based on injury from business competition).
Yet the quoted statement also could be read to
refer to standing in the sense of whether the power companies were
the proper litigants to raise a Tenth Amendment is-sue. To the
extent that might have been the intention of the
Tennessee
Electric Court, it is, for reasons to be explained,
inconsistent with our later precedents. The sentence from
Tennessee Electric that we have quoted and discussed
should be deemed neither controlling nor instructive on the issue
of standing as that term is now defined and applied.
III
Amicus contends that
federal courts should not adjudicate a claim like Bond’s because of
the prudential rule that a party “generally must assert his own
legal rights and interests, and cannot rest his claim to relief on
the legal rights or interests of third parties.”
Warth v.
Seldin,
422
U. S. 490, 499, 500 (1975); see also
Kowalski v.
Tesmer,
543
U. S. 125, 129–130 (2004). In
amicus’ view, to argue
that the National Government has interfered with state sovereignty
in violation of the Tenth Amendment is to assert the legal rights
and interests of States and States alone. That, however, is not so.
As explained below, Bond seeks to vindicate her own constitutional
interests. The individual, in a proper case, can assert injury from
governmental action taken in excess of the authority that
federalism defines. Her rights in this regard do not belong to a
State.
A
The federal system rests on what
might at first seem a counterintuitive insight, that “freedom is
enhanced by the creation of two governments, not one.”
Alden v.
Maine,
527 U. S. 706, 758
(1999). The Framers concluded that allocation of powers between the
National Government and the States enhances freedom, first by
protecting the integrity of the governments themselves, and second
by protecting the people, from whom all governmental powers are
derived.
Federalism has more than one
dynamic. It is true that the federal structure serves to grant and
delimit the prerogatives and responsibilities of the States and the
National Government vis-À-vis one another. The allocation of powers
in our federal system preserves the integrity, dignity, and
residual sovereignty of the States. The federal balance is, in
part, an end in itself, to ensure that States function as political
entities in their own right.
But that is not its exclusive sphere of
operation. Federalism is more than an exercise in setting the
boundary between different institutions of government for their own
integrity. “State sovereignty is not just an end in itself:
‘Rather, federalism secures to citizens the liberties that derive
from the diffusion of sovereign power.’ ”
New York v.
United States,
505 U. S. 144, 181
(1992) (quoting
Coleman v.
Thompson,
501 U. S. 722, 759
(1991) (Blackmun, J., dissenting)).
Some of these liberties are of a political
character. The federal structure allows local policies “more
sensitive to the diverse needs of a heterogeneous society,” permits
“innovation and experimentation,” enables greater citizen
“involvement in democratic processes,” and makes government “more
responsive by putting the States in com-petition for a mobile
citizenry.”
Gregory v.
Ashcroft,
501 U. S. 452, 458
(1991). Federalism secures the freedom of the individual. It allows
States to respond, through the enactment of positive law, to the
initiative of those who seek a voice in shaping the destiny of
their own times without having to rely solely upon the political
processes that control a remote central power. True, of course,
these objects cannot be vindicated by the Judiciary in the absence
of a proper case or controversy; but the individual liberty secured
by federalism is not simply derivative of the rights of the
States.
Federalism also protects the liberty of all
persons within a State by ensuring that laws enacted in excess of
delegated governmental power cannot direct or control their
actions. See
ibid. By denying any one government complete
jurisdiction over all the concerns of public life, federalism
protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary power. When
government acts in excess of its lawful powers, that liberty is at
stake.
The limitations that federalism entails are
not therefore a matter of rights belonging only to the States.
States are not the sole intended beneficiaries of federalism. See
New York,
supra, at 181. An individual has a
direct interest in objecting to laws that upset the constitutional
balance between the National Government and the States when the
enforcement of those laws causes injury that is concrete,
particular, and redressable. Fidelity to principles of federalism
is not for the States alone to vindicate.
The recognition of an injured person’s
standing to object to a violation of a constitutional principle
that allocates power within government is illustrated, in an
analogous context, by cases in which individuals sustain discrete,
justiciable injury from actions that transgress
separation-of-powers limitations. Separation-of-powers principles
are intended, in part, to protect each branch of government from
incursion by the others. Yet the dynamic between and among the
branches is not the only object of the Constitution’s concern. The
structural principles secured by the separation of powers protect
the individual as well.
In the precedents of this Court, the claims of
individuals—not of Government departments—have been the principal
source of judicial decisions concerning separation of powers and
checks and balances. For example, the re-quirement that a bill
enacted by Congress be presented to the President for signature
before it can become law gives the President a check over Congress’
exercise of legislative power. See U. S. Const., Art. I, §7. Yet
individuals, too, are protected by the operations of separation of
powers and checks and balances; and they are not disabled from
relying on those principles in otherwise justiciable cases and
controversies. In
INS v.
Chadha,
462 U. S. 919 (1983), it
was an individual who successfully challenged the so-called
legislative veto—a procedure that Congress used in an attempt to
invalidate an executive determination without presenting the
measure to the President. The procedure diminished the role of the
Executive, but the challenger sought to protect not the
prerogatives of the Presidency as such but rather his own right to
avoid deportation under an invalid order. Chadha’s challenge was
sustained. A cardinal principle of separation of powers was
vindicated at the insistence of an individual, indeed one who was
not a citizen of the United States but who still was a person whose
liberty was at risk.
Chadha is not unique in this respect.
Compare
Clinton v.
City of New York,
524 U. S. 417, 433–436
(1998) (injured parties have standing to challenge Presidential
line-item veto) with
Raines v.
Byrd,
521 U. S. 811, 829–830
(1997) (Congress Members do not); see also,
e.g.,
Free
Enterprise Fund v.
Public Company Accounting Oversight
Bd., 561 U. S. ___ (2010);
Plaut v.
Spendthrift
Farm, Inc.,
514
U. S. 211 (1995);
Bowsher v.
Synar,
478 U. S. 714 (1986);
Northern Pipeline Constr. Co. v.
Marathon Pipe Line
Co.,
458 U. S.
50 (1982);
Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v.
Sawyer,
343
U. S. 579 (1952);
A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v.
United States,
295 U. S. 495 (1935). If
the constitutional structure of our Government that protects
individual liberty is compromised, individuals who suffer otherwise
justiciable injury may object.
Just as it is appropriate for an individual,
in a proper case, to invoke separation-of-powers or
checks-and-balances constraints, so too may a litigant, in a proper
case, challenge a law as enacted in contravention of constitutional
principles of federalism. That claim need not depend on the
vicarious assertion of a State’s constitutional interests, even if
a State’s constitutional interests are also implicated.
B
In this regard it is necessary to
address a misconception in the position the Government now urges
this Court to adopt. As noted, the Government agrees that
petitioner has standing to challenge the validity of §229. That
concession, however, depends on describing petitioner’s claim in a
narrow way. The Government contends petitioner asserts only that
Congress could not enact the challenged statute under its
enumerated powers. Were she to argue, the Government insists, that
the statute “interferes with a specific aspect of state
sovereignty,” either instead of or in addition to her enumerated
powers contention, the Court should deny her standing. Brief for
United States 18 (filed Dec. 3, 2010).
The premise that petitioner does
or should avoid making an “interference-with-sovereignty” argument
is flawed.
Id., at 33. Here she asserts, for example, that
the conduct with which she is charged is “local in nature” and
“should be left to local authorities to prosecute” and that
congressional regulation of that conduct “signals a massive and
unjustifiable expansion of federal law enforcement into
state-regulated domain.” Record in No. 2:07–cr–00528–JG–1 (ED Pa.),
Doc. 27, pp. 6, 19. The public policy of the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania, enacted in its capacity as sovereign, has been
displaced by that of the National Government. The law to which
petitioner is subject, the prosecution she seeks to counter, and
the punishment she must face might not have come about if the
matter were left for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to decide.
Indeed, petitioner argues that under Pennsylvania law the expected
maximum term of imprisonment she could have received for the same
conduct was barely more than a third of her federal sentence.
There is no basis to support the Government’s
pro- posed distinction between different federalism arguments for
purposes of prudential standing rules. The princi- ples of limited
national powers and state sovereignty are intertwined. While
neither originates in the Tenth Amendment, both are expressed by
it. Impermissible interference with state sovereignty is not within
the enumerated powers of the National Government, see
New
York, 505 U. S., at 155–159, and action that exceeds the
National Government’s enumerated powers undermines the sovereign
interests of States. See
United States v.
Lopez,
514 U. S. 549,
564 (1995). The unconstitutional action can cause concomitant
injury to persons in individual cases.
An individual who challenges federal action on
these grounds is, of course, subject to the Article III
requirements, as well as prudential rules, applicable to all
litigants and claims. Individuals have “no standing to complain
simply that their Government is violating the law.”
Allen
v.
Wright,
468 U. S. 737, 755
(1984). It is not enough that a litigant “suffers in some
indefinite way in common with people generally.”
Frothingham v.
Mellon,
262 U. S. 447, 488
(1923) (decided with
Massachusetts v.
Mellon).
If, in connection with the claim being asserted, a litigant who
commences suit fails to show actual or imminent harm that is
concrete and particular, fairly traceable to the conduct complained
of, and likely to be redressed by a favorable decision, the Federal
Judiciary cannot hear the claim.
Lujan, 504 U. S., at
560–561. These requirements must be satisfied before an individual
may assert a constitutional claim; and in some instances, the
result may be that a State is the only entity capable of
demonstrating the requisite injury.
In this case, however, where the litigant is a
party to an otherwise justiciable case or controversy, she is not
forbidden to object that her injury results from disregard of the
federal structure of our Government. Whether the Tenth Amendment is
regarded as simply a “ ‘truism,’ ”
New York,
supra, at 156 (quoting
United States v.
Darby,
312
U. S. 100, 124 (1941)), or whether it has independent force of
its own, the result here is the same.
* * *
There is no basis in precedent or
principle to deny petitioner’s standing to raise her claims. The
ultimate issue of the statute’s validity turns in part on whether
the law can be deemed “necessary and proper for carrying into
Execution” the President’s Article II, §2 Treaty Power, see U. S.
Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 18. This Court expresses no view on the
merits of that argument. It can be addressed by the Court of
Appeals on remand.
The judgment of the Court of
Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
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