Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-840_6jfm.pdf
Page Number: 46

Cite as:  593 U. S. ____ (2021) 

21 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

Consider the States’ standing to seek relief from the IRS 
reporting obligations.  The States identified these costs in 
their  complaint,  see  App.  58–60,  Amended  Complaint 
¶41(i); offered extensive evidence of these costs on summary 
judgment, see supra, at 10–11; and argued that these pro-
visions cannot be severed from the individual mandate, see, 
e.g., App. 63, Amended Complaint ¶57 (“The remainder of 
the  ACA  is  non-severable  from  the  individual  mandate, 
meaning  that  the  Act  must  be  invalidated  as  a  whole”).
They expressly advanced that argument in the Court of Ap-
peals,  see  Brief  for  State  Appellees  in  Texas  v.  United 
States,  No.  19–10011  (CA5),  pp.  23–24,  36–50,  and  the 
Court of Appeals accepted it for standing purposes, see 945 
F.  3d,  at  384–387.  In  this  Court,  the  States  argued  that 

—————— 

The concurrence invokes the rule that merits decisions that do not dis-
cuss  jurisdiction  are  not  of  precedential  value  on  jurisdictional  issues. 
Ante, at 5.  This argument is apparently a response to the many cases 
(141 years’ worth) in which this Court reached the merits of claims struc-
tured like those of the state plaintiffs in the suit at hand.  See supra, at 
16–20.  The suggestion, I take it, is that the plaintiffs in those cases may
have lacked standing and that therefore this Court erred in reaching the 
merits.    To  put  the  point  lightly,  that  seems  unlikely,  and  even  if  our 
prior decisions have not expressly embraced a standing theory like the 
States’,  there  is  no  reason  why  a  conceptually  sound  theory  should  be
rejected just because we never previously saw fit to register express ap-
proval.

JUSTICE THOMAS states that “this Court has been inconsistent in de-
scribing whether inseverability is a remedy or merits question.”  Ante, at 
5.  But all that matters for present purposes is that inseverability is not
a standing question.  And in all events, the concurrence elsewhere recog-
nizes that severability is a merits question.  See ante, at 6 (“[S]tanding-
through-inseverability could only be a valid theory of standing to the ex-
tent it treats inseverability as a merits exercise of statutory interpreta-
tion”); ante, at 5, n. 2 (treating severability as a merits question under 
the framework set forth in Steel Co., 523 U. S., at 89).

Finally, JUSTICE THOMAS suggests that a lack of argument on severa-
bility  “poses  a  significant  obstacle  to  review,”  ante,  at  5,  n. 2,  but  that 
flatly ignores that each party—not to mention many amici—extensively
briefed the severability question in this Court.