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BERGER v. NORTH CAROLINA STATE 
CONFERENCE OF THE NAACP 
Syllabus 

from the record, and granted a preliminary injunction barring enforce-
ment of S. B. 824.  The Fourth Circuit considered both District Court 
rulings  in  separate  appeals  before  separate  panels.  On  the  prelimi-
nary  injunction  ruling,  the  panel  held  that  the  District  Court  had 
abused  its  discretion  because  the  record  contained  insufficient  evi-
dence to show that S. B. 824 violated the Federal Constitution.  On the 
intervention ruling, a separate panel agreed with the legislative lead-
ers  and  held  that  the  District  Court  had  erred  when  denying  them 
leave to intervene.  Eventually, however, the Fourth Circuit decided to
rehear the matter en banc and ruled that the legislative leaders were
not entitled to intervene in the District Court proceedings.  This Court 
agreed to hear the matter to resolve disagreements among the courts
of appeals on the proper treatment of motions to intervene in cases like
this one. 

Held: North  Carolina’s  legislative  leaders  are  entitled  to  intervene  in 

this litigation.  Pp. 8–19.

(a)  Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(a)(2) provides that a “court 
must  permit  anyone  to  intervene”  who,  (1)  “[o]n  timely  motion,”  (2)
“claims an interest relating to the property or transaction that is the 
subject of the action, and is so situated that disposing the action may 
as a practical matter impair or impede the movant’s ability to protect
its interest,” (3) “unless existing parties adequately represent that in-
terest.”  No one disputes the timeliness of the motion to intervene here. 
The Court thus addresses the Rule’s two remaining requirements. 

States possess “ ‘a legitimate interest in the continued enforce[ment]
of [their] own statutes,’ ” Cameron v. EMW Women’s Surgical Center, 
P. S. C., 595 U. S. ___, ___,  and  States may organize themselves in a 
variety  of  ways.  When  a  State  chooses  to  allocate  authority  among
different officials who do not answer to one another, different interests 
and perspectives, all important to the administration of state govern-
ment, may emerge.  See, e.g., Brnovich v. Democratic National Com-
mittee, 594 U. S. ___.  Appropriate respect for these realities suggests
that federal courts should rarely question that a State’s interests will
be practically impaired or impeded if its duly authorized representa-
tives are excluded from participating in federal litigation challenging 
state law.  Nor are state interests the only interests at stake.  Permit-
ting the participation of lawfully authorized state agents promotes in-
formed  federal-court  decisionmaking  and  avoids  the  risk  of  setting
aside duly enacted state law based on an incomplete understanding of
relevant state interests.  This Court’s teachings on these scores have 
been many, clear, and recent.  See, e.g., Virginia House of Delegates v. 
Bethune-Hill, 587 U. S. ___; Hollingsworth v. Perry, 570 U. S. 693. 

These precedents and the principles they represent are dispositive
here.  North Carolina law explicitly provides that “[t]he Speaker of the