Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-15-05065/USCOURTS-caDC-15-05065-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Jacob J. Lew
Appellee
United States Department of the Treasury
Appellee
Victor K. Williams
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 17, 2016 Decided April 22, 2016

No. 15-5065

VICTOR K. WILLIAMS,

APPELLANT

v.

JACOB J. LEW, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS SECRETARY OF 

THE U.S. TREASURY DEPARTMENT AND UNITED STATES 

DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:14-cv-00183)

Justin G. Florence argued the cause for appellant. On the 

briefs was Victor Williams, pro se. Douglas HallwardDriemeier, Edward F. Roche, and Jonathan Ference-Burke

entered appearances. 

Molly R. Silfen, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause for appellees. With her on the brief were 

Benjamin C. Mizer, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney 

General, and Mark B. Stern, Attorney.

USCA Case #15-5065 Document #1609889 Filed: 04/22/2016 Page 1 of 16
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Before: TATEL and GRIFFITH, Circuit Judges, and 

SENTELLE, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge

SENTELLE.

SENTELLE, Senior Circuit Judge: Appellant Victor 

Williams, as a holder of U.S. public debt, challenges the 

constitutionality of the Debt Limit Statute, 31 U.S.C. § 3101. 

Williams alleges on appeal violations of the Fourteenth 

Amendment Public Debt Clause, U.S. Const. amend. XIV, 

§ 4, and the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause, U.S. 

Const. amend. V. He seeks relief declaring the Debt Limit 

Statute unconstitutional and enjoining the Secretary from 

enforcing the statute. Because Williams fails to allege 

plausible factual allegations to establish the constitutional 

minimum requirements for Article III standing, either in the 

first amended complaint filed with the district court or in his 

proposed amended complaint filed with this Court under 28 

U.S.C. § 1653, we affirm the decision of the district court 

dismissing Williams’s claims for lack of standing. We also 

affirm the district court’s order denying Williams’s motion to 

amend his first amended complaint and deny Williams’s 

motion to amend his complaint on appeal. 

I. BACKGROUND

This case is an outgrowth of the continuing debate 

surrounding the statutory limit on U.S. debt. The Debt Limit 

Statute, 31 U.S.C. § 3101(b), imposes an upper limit on “[t]he 

face amount of obligations issued under this chapter and the 

face amount of obligations whose principal and interest are 

guaranteed by the United States Government.” The United 

States first instituted a ceiling on the federal debt in 1917 to 

accompany the United States’ entrance into World War I. See 

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D. Andrew Austin, Cong. Research Serv., The Debt Limit: 

History and Recent Increases 2-3 (2008), http://fpc.state.gov/

documents/organization/105193.pdf; see also Act of Sept. 24, 

1917, Pub. L. No. 65-43, 40 Stat. 288 (codified as amended at 

31 U.S.C. § 3101). The original purpose of the Debt Limit 

Statute was to increase the Treasury Department’s flexibility

to manage the government’s financial obligations. See 

Austin, supra, at 3; see also Josh Hazan, Unconstitutional 

Debt Ceilings, 103 Geo. L.J. Online 29, 30-32 (2014). Yet 

both in 2011 and in 2013, congressional budgeting disputes 

threatened default on U.S. obligations as outstanding debt 

broached the debt ceiling. See Hazan, supra, at 29-30. 

Following the 2011 impasse, “U.S. government debt was 

downgraded, the stock market fell, measures of volatility 

jumped, and credit risk spreads widened noticeably . . . .”

U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury, The Potential Macroeconomic

Effect of Debt Ceiling Brinksmanship 1 (2013), https://

www.treasury.gov/connect/blog/Pages/Report-onMacroeconomic-Effect-of-Debt-CeilingBrinkmanship.aspx. Likewise, the 2013 dispute “further

eroded confidence in the United States government, and 

wounded the already fragile economy.” Chad DeVeaux, The 

Fourth Zone of Presidential Power: Analyzing the DebtCeiling Standoffs Through the Prism of Youngstown Steel, 47 

Conn. L. Rev. 395, 407 (2014). In the wake of these political 

impasses, Congress presently has suspended the Debt Limit 

Statute through March 15, 2017. See Bipartisan Budget Act 

of 2015, Pub. L. No. 114-74, § 901(a), 129 Stat. 584, 620.

Williams holds various Treasury-issued public debt 

instruments, including “savings bonds and Treasury bills, 

notes, bonds, and TIPS [Treasury Inflation Indexed 

Securities] of various durations (4-weeks, 13-weeks, 26-

weeks, 52-week[s], 3-years, 5-years, 7-years, [and] 30-

years).” J.A. 20 ¶ 39. Seeking a judicial solution to what he 

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views as the perpetual “political conflict regarding the 

inevitable need to raise the debt limit,” J.A. 6 ¶ 2, on February 

7, 2014, Williams filed suit, challenging the constitutionality 

of the Debt Limit Statute, against the U.S. Department of the 

Treasury and the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury (collectively, 

the “Treasury Department”). Before the Treasury Department 

lodged a responsive pleading or Rule 12(b) motion, Williams 

filed a first amended complaint as-of-right on March 5, 2014. 

Cf. Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(1). The first amended complaint 

sought a judgment declaring the Debt Limit Statute 

unconstitutional and a permanent injunction prohibiting the 

Treasury Department from “relying upon, invoking, or 

enforcing” the statute. J.A. 34. 

Williams asserted three alleged constitutional infirmities 

in the Debt Limit Statute before the district court. First, he 

claimed that the statute violates the Public Debt Clause, U.S. 

Const. amend. XIV, § 4, which states, in relevant part:

The validity of the public debt of the United 

States, authorized by law, including debts 

incurred for payment of pensions and 

bounties for services in suppressing 

insurrection or rebellion, shall not be 

questioned. 

See J.A. 21 ¶ 42(A); see also Amended Complaint Filed on 

Appeal Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1653 ¶¶ 65(A), 66, Williams v. 

Lew, No. 15-5065 (D.C. Cir. May 14, 2015) [hereinafter Pr. 

Am. Compl.]. Second, Williams alleged a violation of the 

Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause based on the 

Treasury Department’s “arbitrary enforcement” of the Debt 

Limit Statute. J.A. 21 ¶ 42(A); see also Pr. Am. Compl. 

¶¶ 65(A), 66. Finally, Williams made a separation-of-powers 

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argument that the Debt Limit Statute “prevent[s] the 

Executive from carrying out sworn Article II § 3 duties to 

‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’” J.A. 21 

¶ 42(B); see also Pr. Am. Compl. ¶ 65(B).

The Treasury Department moved to dismiss Williams’s 

first amended complaint under Rule 12(b)(1) for lack of 

standing. Williams then moved under Rule 15(a)(2) for leave 

to file a second amended complaint, in part “to clarify his 

claims [and to] further explain and develop the basis for his 

standing . . . .” J.A. 96. The district court denied Williams’s 

motion to amend without explanation via minute order on 

May 18, 2014. On January 6, 2015, the district court granted 

the Treasury Department’s motion to dismiss, concluding that 

Williams lacked standing to pursue his claims in federal court. 

Williams now appeals from the district court’s denial of his 

motion to amend and from the order dismissing his claims for 

lack of standing. Williams also moves this Court for leave to 

amend his complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1653. Request To 

Allow Filing of an Amended Complaint & Alternative Motion 

To Vacate, Reverse, & Remand, Williams v. Lew, No. 15-

5065 (D.C. Cir. May 1, 2015). We have jurisdiction pursuant 

to 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

II. ANALYSIS

Williams makes only a fleeting reference in his opening 

brief, within a section ostensibly discussing his Public Debt 

Clause claim, to his separation-of-powers argument. 

Appellant’s Br. 15-16 (stating that the debt limit “traps the 

Executive in an arbitrary ‘trilemna’ [sic] . . . [which] works a 

structural constitutional violation”). Because he fails to 

develop that argument, or his standing to assert it, Williams 

has therefore forfeited the claim. See Abdullah v. Obama, 

753 F.3d 193, 199 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (A “bare and conclusory 

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assertion” in the opening brief “fail[s] to preserve the 

claim.”); N.Y. Rehab. Care Mgmt., LLC v. NLRB, 506 F.3d 

1070, 1076 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (“It is not enough merely to 

mention a possible argument in the most skeletal way, leaving 

the court to do counsel’s work.”). The only remaining issues 

on appeal are: (1) whether the district court erred in denying 

Williams’s motion to amend the first amended complaint, and 

(2) whether Williams has Article III standing to bring his 

claims in federal court. We affirm as to both.

A. ANY ERROR IN THE DENIAL OF WILLIAMS’S 

MOTION TO AMEND WAS HARMLESS

Under Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(2), when unable to do so asof-right, “a party may amend its pleading only with the 

opposing party’s written consent or the court’s leave. The 

court should freely give leave when justice so requires.” We 

review a district court’s denial of a motion to amend a 

complaint for abuse of discretion. See Sierra Club v. U.S. 

Army Corps of Engineers, 803 F.3d 31, 53 (D.C. Cir. 2015). 

Under our case law it is an abuse of discretion for a district 

court to deny leave to amend without providing a reasoned 

justification for the denial. See Barkley v. U.S. Marshals 

Serv., 766 F.3d 25, 38 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (citing Foman v. 

Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962)). In this case, the district 

court denied Williams’s motion to file a second amended 

complaint in a minute order lacking any reasons for the 

denial. Such an unsubstantiated order may amount to an 

abuse of discretion. Barkley, 766 F.3d at 38. However, this

omission of reasons is at worst harmless error.

Governing law permits litigants to amend their pleadings 

“in . . . appellate courts” to cure “[d]efective allegations of 

jurisdiction . . . .” 28 U.S.C. § 1653. As noted above, 

Williams filed both a § 1653 motion and an amended 

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complaint (the “Proposed Amended Complaint”) with this 

Court. “Courts may deny a motion to amend a complaint as 

futile . . . if the proposed claim would not survive a motion to 

dismiss.” James Madison Ltd. by Hecht v. Ludwig, 82 F.3d 

1085, 1099 (D.C. Cir. 1996). Accordingly, because we hold 

that Williams’s Proposed Amended Complaint fails to state a 

plausible basis for standing, we deny the pending § 1653 

motion as futile and affirm the district court’s minute order. 

See 28 U.S.C. § 2111 (Appellate courts must disregard “errors 

or defects which do not affect the substantial rights of the 

parties.”). 

B. WILLIAMS LACKS ARTICLE III STANDING

1. Standard of Review

We review the district court’s standing determinations de 

novo. See Food & Water Watch, Inc. v. Vilsack, 808 F.3d 

905, 913 (D.C. Cir. 2015). “To survive a motion to dismiss 

for lack of standing, a complaint must state a plausible claim 

that the plaintiff has suffered an injury in fact fairly traceable 

to the actions of the defendant that is likely to be redressed by 

a favorable decision on the merits.” Humane Soc’y v. Vilsack, 

797 F.3d 4, 8 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (citing Lujan v. Defenders of 

Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992)). While we accept all 

“well-pleaded factual allegations as true and draw all 

reasonable inferences from those allegations in the plaintiff’s 

favor,” we do not assume the truth of legal conclusions. 

Arpaio v. Obama, 797 F.3d 11, 19 (D.C. Cir. 2015). Neither

do we accept “threadbare recitals of a cause of action’s 

elements, supported by mere conclusory statements.” 

Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 663 (2009).

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2. Williams Does Not Allege a Cognizable 

Injury-In-Fact

The operative complaint before the district court was 

Williams’s first amended complaint. See J.A. 2. This 

complaint clearly fails to allege a plausible basis for standing. 

Williams asserts only that he holds United States public debt 

and “avers direct, individual, concrete, and certainly 

impending harm from the unconstitutional debt ceiling 

statute.” J.A. 20 ¶ 39; cf. id. at 5-6 ¶ 1 (noting the “threat[] 

[of] Defendants’ arbitrary default on Plaintiff’s securities”); 

id. at 27 ¶ 50 (alleging “concrete and certainly impending 

harm”). Because such conclusory statements and legal 

conclusions are insufficient to state a plausible basis for 

standing, Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 663, Williams can only avoid 

dismissal if the Proposed Amended Complaint accompanying 

his § 1653 motion with this Court cures the defect, see James 

Madison Ltd. by Hecht, 82 F.3d at 1099. We therefore focus 

our attention on the Proposed Amended Complaint.

In that complaint, Williams alleges past, current, and 

future harms from the Debt Limit Statute to his public debt 

holdings. Specifically, Williams discusses how the market 

devalued public debt as a result of the 2013 “default crisis,” 

including, for example, how “[o]n October 15, 2013, interest 

rates on commercial interbank loans were lower than interest 

rates on Treasury bills.” Pr. Am. Compl. ¶¶ 30-35. As to 

current harms, Williams claims that the Debt Limit Statute 

degrades the low-risk profile of his investments and devalues 

those investments. Id. ¶¶ 2, 21, 30, 41, 44. Such harms 

supposedly worsen when the Treasury Department resorts to 

“extraordinary measures” following breach of the debt 

ceiling. Id. ¶¶ 4, 45. Williams also alleges that he suffered 

and continues to suffer noneconomic harms in the form of 

“increasing[] worry and concern” about his public debt 

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investments. Id. ¶¶ 2, 21. Finally, Williams avers to 

“certainly-impending” future economic and noneconomic 

harms from the full enforcement of the Debt Limit Statute—

i.e., an actual default on United States debts. Id. ¶¶ 4, 45, 50.

Williams’s allegations of past injury are irrelevant to the 

standing inquiry in this case. We stated in Arpaio v. Obama

that, where a plaintiff “seeks prospective declaratory and 

injunctive relief, he must establish an ongoing or future injury 

that is ‘certainly impending’; he may not rest on past injury.” 

797 F.3d at 19. Williams seeks “a declaratory judgment that 

the debt ceiling statute is unconstitutional” along with a 

permanent injunction prohibiting enforcement of the statute.

Pr. Am. Compl. at 60-61. He therefore must rely on concrete 

and particular current or future injuries-in-fact to establish 

standing.

Unfortunately for Williams, his claims of future injuries 

are entirely conjectural. It is indisputable that the United 

States has never defaulted on its debt obligations. See 

Williams v. Lew, 77 F. Supp. 3d 129, 132-33 (D.D.C. 2015); 

Appellees’ Br. 3. Further, as the district court correctly noted, 

any future injury that Williams might suffer follows from an

extended chain of contingencies. Williams v. Lew, 77 F. 

Supp. 3d at 133. In particular: (1) federal debt must reach the 

statutory ceiling; (2) the Treasury Department must exhaust 

any “extraordinary measures” to avoid a default; (3) the 

United States must be unable to pay its obligations with “cash 

on hand” in a given day; (4) payment on Williams’s securities 

must come due during such time; and (5) Williams must 

continue to hold those securities. Id. Furthermore, Congress 

must fail to enact legislation suspending or increasing the debt 

limit despite an impending breach of the statutory ceiling—

something it has done on over seventy occasions since 1962. 

See Austin, supra, at 8. “When considering any chain of 

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allegations for standing purposes, we may reject as overly 

speculative those links which are predictions of future events 

(especially future actions to be taken by third parties) . . . .” 

Arpaio, 797 F.3d at 21 (citation and internal quotation marks 

omitted). Because Williams fails plausibly to allege that any 

future injuries are “certainly impending to constitute injury in 

fact,” he cannot rely on such injuries to establish Article III 

standing. Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 133 S. Ct. 1138, 

1147 (2013) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted) 

(emphasis in original). 

Thus, in order to satisfy Article III’s standing 

requirements, Williams must put forth plausible allegations of

current and ongoing injuries. An analysis of the Proposed 

Amended Complaint shows that Williams fails to meet this 

standard. The crux of Williams’s argument is that the Debt 

Limit Statute degrades the risk profile of his public debt 

holdings and devalues those investments. To support this 

position, Williams cites in his briefs, but not in the complaint, 

a July 2015 report from the Government Accountability

Office (“GAO”) discussing the market effects of “debt limit 

impasses.” See U.S. Gov’t Accountability Office, DEBT

LIMIT: Market Response to Recent Impasses Underscores

Need To Consider Alternative Approaches (2015) [hereinafter 

GAO Report], http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/671286.pdf. 

The GAO Report admittedly details numerous effects that the 

2011 and 2013 debt limit impasses had on U.S. financial 

markets. For example, investors avoided “at-risk” Treasury 

securities; interest rates on “at-risk” securities rose; the 

liquidity of “at-risk” securities declined; investors substituted 

“at-risk” Treasury securities for other investments; and 

investors refused to accept “at-risk” Treasury securities as 

collateral. Id. at 12-28.

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The Court may take judicial notice of the GAO Report. 

See Fed. R. Evid. 201(b); see also Farah v. Esquire 

Magazine, 736 F.3d 528, 534 (D.C. Cir. 2013) (“And, [i]n 

determining whether a complaint states a claim, the court may 

consider the facts alleged in the complaint, documents 

attached thereto or incorporated therein, and matters of which 

it may take judicial notice.” (alteration in original) (citation 

and internal quotation marks omitted)). However, the GAO 

Report does not make Williams’s alleged current injuries 

plausible. To the contrary, the report suggests that prior debt

limit impasses only affected “at-risk” Treasury securities, i.e., 

holdings with payments due during the impasse. See, e.g.,

GAO Report 13 (“Market participants said that investors were 

primarily concerned with shorter-term Treasury bills that 

were maturing during this time [late-October through midNovember 2013].”); U.S. Gov’t Accountability Office, GAO 

Highlights: Highlights of GAO-15-476, A Report to the 

Congress 1 (2015), http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/

671287.pdf (“During the 2013 debt limit impasse, investors 

reported taking the unprecedented action of systematically 

avoiding certain Treasury securities—those that matured 

around the dates when the [Treasury Department] projected it 

would exhaust . . . extraordinary measures . . . .”). Williams’s 

current investment holdings are not “at-risk.” As the Treasury 

Department states, the Debt Limit Statute is suspended until 

March 15, 2017. See Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, Pub. L. 

No. 114-74, § 901(a). Any effect that the Debt Limit 

Statute’s specter may have on Williams’s current public debt

holdings is therefore speculative and made no less so by the 

allegations in the Proposed Amended Complaint. See Lujan, 

504 U.S. at 560 (injury-in-fact cannot be “conjectural” or 

“hypothetical”). Nor is it clear that Williams’s securities will 

become “at-risk” in the future. Because Congress has 

suspended the Debt Limit Statute, Williams must rely on rote 

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conjecture that another debt limit impasse will occur once the 

suspension ends. See id.

Furthermore, Williams’s alleged noneconomic injuries do 

not provide a plausible basis for standing. For the reasons 

stated above, any current harm to Williams’s investments is 

speculative, and he fails to allege future harms that are 

certainly impending. The Court cannot exercise jurisdiction 

based on “worr[ies] and concern[s]” that lack a reasoned 

basis. Pr. Am. Compl. ¶ 2; see Clapper, 133 S. Ct. at 1151 

(“[R]espondents cannot manufacture standing merely by 

inflicting harm on themselves based on their fears of 

hypothetical future harm that is not certainly impending.”).

3. Williams Separately Lacks Standing To 

Pursue His Due Process Claims

Williams asserts a Fifth Amendment due process 

violation based on the Treasury Department’s “arbitrary” 

enforcement of the Debt Limit Statute. Pr. Am. Compl. ¶¶ 5, 

11, 21, 46. In particular, Williams alleges that the Treasury 

Department cannot prioritize payments to holders of public 

debt in the event of default, id. ¶ 5, and it “has no rational 

method to protect Treasury bondholders, insure Certificate of 

Indebtedness liquidity, or honor promises to repay the TSP G 

Fund in the certain event of default,” id. ¶ 46. This claim 

turns entirely on hypothetical future injury from the arbitrary 

prioritization of Treasury funds and therefore fails plausibly 

to allege a cognizable injury-in-fact. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560;

see also Williams v. Lew, 77 F. Supp. 3d at 133 n.4 (noting 

that “no . . . plan or policy for prioritizing debt payments has 

even been formed” by the Treasury Department). 

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4. The Court Need Not Reach the Treasury 

Department’s Remaining Arguments

The Treasury Department also argues that we should 

dismiss Williams’s claims as “generalized grievances” that 

“do not state an Article III case or controversy.” Lujan, 504 

U.S. at 574. We need not parse the line between a 

“generalized grievance” and a “concrete, though widely 

shared” injury-in-fact. FEC v. Akins, 524 U.S. 11, 23-24 

(1998). Williams fails to allege plausible facts to establish the 

“irreducible constitutional minimum of standing,” Lujan, 504 

U.S. at 560, thereby obviating the generalized grievance issue. 

For the same reason, we find it unnecessary to revisit our 

prior cases discussing the availability, or lack thereof, of 

“bondholder standing.” See Reuss v. Balles, 584 F.2d 461, 

469-70 n.29 (D.C. Cir. 1978); cf. Riegle v. FOMC, 656 F.2d 

873, 876 (D.C. Cir. 1981); Comm. for Monetary Reform v. 

Bd. of Govs. of Fed. Reserve Sys., 766 F.2d 538, 540 (D.C. 

Cir. 1985).

We therefore affirm the district court’s dismissal of 

Williams’s claims for lack of standing.

C. WILLIAMS’S FACIAL CHALLENGE TO THE DEBT 

LIMIT STATUTE DOES NOT PROVIDE AN 

INDEPENDENT BASIS FOR STANDING

In the alternative, Williams cryptically alleges that his 

facial challenge to the Debt Limit Statute is sufficient to 

confer Article III standing. Williams’s argument is itself 

facially suspect, and it is also unavailing under the Supreme 

Court’s and our case law. 

As the Supreme Court stated explicitly in Lujan, the three 

elements of standing—i.e., injury-in-fact, traceability, and 

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redressability—encompass “the irreducible constitutional 

minimum” under Article III. 504 U.S. at 560. Absent any 

one of these requirements, federal courts lack jurisdiction to 

adjudicate a plaintiff’s claims. As the Court stated in Bond v. 

United States, 564 U.S. 211, 225 (2011), “If . . . 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.” By 

contrast, “the threshold for facial challenges is a species of 

third party (jus tertii) standing, which . . . [is] a prudential 

doctrine and not one mandated by Article III of the 

Constitution.” City of Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41, 55 

n.22 (1999) (Stevens, J., joined by Souter and Ginsburg, JJ.); 

see also LaRoque v. Holder, 650 F.3d 777, 791-92 (D.C. Cir. 

2011) (stating the “prudential principle” limiting third-party 

standing); Anderson v. Holder, 647 F.3d 1165, 1172 (D.C. 

Cir. 2011) (“The traditional rule is that a person to whom a 

statute may constitutionally be applied may not challenge that 

statute on the ground that it may conceivably be applied 

unconstitutionally to others in situations not before the 

Court.” (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)).

Because, as demonstrated above, Williams fails to allege 

plausible facts to establish the “irreducible constitutional 

minimum” requirements for Article III standing under Lujan, 

504 U.S. at 560, the district court also properly dismissed his 

facial challenge to the Debt Limit Statute. Williams cites

Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954), for the 

proposition that a facial violation of a constitutional interest 

confers jurisdiction on the federal courts. But Williams 

misreads that case. The plaintiffs in Brown each suffered an 

injury-in-fact—“they [were] denied admission to schools 

attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting 

segregation according to race.” Id. at 488. “This segregation 

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was alleged to deprive the plaintiffs of the equal protection of 

the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment.” Id. 

Furthermore, the Supreme Court has expressly disavowed the 

theory that Williams advances here; “an asserted right to have 

the Government act in accordance with law is not sufficient, 

standing alone, to confer jurisdiction on a federal court.” 

Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 754 (1984), abrogated on other 

grounds by Lexmark Int’l, Inc. v. Static Control Components, 

Inc., 134 S. Ct. 1377 (2014). 

We recognize that the contours of Article III standing 

with respect to facial constitutional challenges may be

imprecise. Compare Los Angeles Police Dep’t v. United 

Reporting Pub. Corp., 528 U.S. 32, 38-40 (1999) (citing cases 

in which the Court permitted facial challenges but reaffirming 

the “traditional rule” limiting such claims), and United States 

v. Szabo, 760 F.3d 997, 1003-04 (9th Cir. 2014) (“While an 

overbreadth challenge may be brought where a statute is 

constitutional as applied to the individual challenging it, such 

challenges are exceptions to the ordinary standing 

requirements, and are not ‘casually employed.’”), with

Planned Parenthood of Wis., Inc. v. Schimel, 806 F.3d 908, 

910 (7th Cir. 2015) (noting that “the Supreme Court has 

entertained both broad facial challenges and pre-enforcement 

as-applied challenges to abortion laws brought by physicians 

on behalf of their patients” (quoting Isaacson v. Horne, 716 

F.3d 1213, 1221 (9th Cir. 2013))), and Dickerson v. 

Napolitano, 604 F.3d 732, 743 n.11 (2d Cir. 2010) (“One 

potential case where an as-applied challenge may not be 

permitted . . . but a facial challenge still conceivably could be 

permissible would be a challenge to a law that had not yet 

been, but potentially could be, applied unconstitutionally to 

the party challenging it.”). See generally Toghil v. 

Commonwealth, 768 S.E.2d 674, 678 (Va. 2015) (requiring an 

appellant making a facial challenge to “show[] . . . that the 

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statute in question is unconstitutional as applied to him and 

that the statute in question would not be constitutional in any 

context” and citing federal court cases). 

But we know of no case stating that a facial challenge to 

the constitutionality of a statute itself suffices to establish 

standing, nor do we adopt such a holding. Unless there is an 

actual Article III “Case[]” or “Controvers[y]” before us, we 

lack jurisdiction. See U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 1; Lujan, 

504 U.S. at 559-60; Grocery Mfrs. Ass’n v. EPA, 693 F.3d 

169, 174 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (“The application of the standing 

doctrine . . . ensures that federal courts act only within their 

constitutionally prescribed role: resolving ‘Cases’ and 

‘Controversies,’ those disputes which are appropriately 

resolved through the judicial process.” (citations and internal 

quotation marks omitted)). Because Williams does not make 

this constitutionally mandated showing, we therefore affirm 

the district court’s dismissal of his claim that the Debt Limit 

Statute is facially unconstitutional.

III. CONCLUSION

We express no opinion on the merits of Williams’s 

constitutional claims. For the reasons stated herein, the Court 

affirms both the district court’s order denying Williams’s 

motion to amend his complaint and the order dismissing 

Williams’s claims for lack of standing. Williams’s motion 

under 28 U.S.C. § 1653 to amend his complaint on appeal is 

accordingly denied.

So ordered.

USCA Case #15-5065 Document #1609889 Filed: 04/22/2016 Page 16 of 16