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BERGER v. NORTH CAROLINA STATE 
CONFERENCE OF THE NAACP 
Opinion of the Court 

(2013);  Metro  Broadcasting,  Inc.  v.  FCC,  497  U. S.  547 
(1990);  Buckley  v.  Valeo,  424  U. S.  1  (1976)  (per curiam).
This Court even hears cases in which officials from a single
State have sued each other in federal court.  See, e.g., Vir-
ginia  Office  for  Protection  and  Advocacy  v.  Stewart,  563 
U. S. 247 (2011).  Whatever additional burdens adding the
legislative leaders to this case may pose, those burdens fall 
well within the bounds of everyday case management.* 

* 
Through the General Assembly, the people of North Car-
olina have authorized the leaders of their legislature to de-
fend  duly  enacted  state  statutes  against  constitutional
challenge.  Ordinarily,  a  federal  court  must  respect  that
kind  of  sovereign  choice,  not  assemble  presumptions
against  it.  Having  satisfied  the  terms  of  Federal  Rule  of 
Civil Procedure 24(a)(2), North Carolina’s legislative lead-
ers  are  entitled  to  intervene  in  this  litigation.   The  judg-
ment of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is 

Reversed. 

—————— 

*The parties disagree whether our review of this case should be gov-
erned by a de novo or abuse-of-discretion standard.  We find it unneces-
sary  to  resolve  that  question  because,  even  under  the  latter  and  more 
forgiving standard, a misunderstanding of applicable law generally con-
stitutes reversible error.  See Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U. S. 
384, 405 (1990).  And here the lower courts erred as a matter of law at 
both relevant steps of the Rule 24(a)(2) analysis, first by failing to afford
due respect to North Carolina’s law designating the legislative leaders
as its agents in litigation of this sort, and then by “setting the [interven-
tion] bar . . . too high.”  999 F. 3d 915, 945 (CA4 2021) (Quattlebaum, J., 
dissenting).  Likewise, because we hold that the legislative leaders are
entitled to intervene as a matter of right under Rule 24(a)(2), we need 
not  decide  their  alternative  request  for  permissive  intervention  under 
Rule 24(b).