Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-248_4fc5.pdf
Page Number: 30.0

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BERGER v. NORTH CAROLINA STATE 
CONFERENCE OF THE NAACP 
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

holds despite the fact that state respondents already repre-
sent the State’s interests in this litigation in a manner that
the District Court found adequate, and where the attorney
general’s defense of the constitutionality of the voter-iden-
tification law has thus far proved successful. 

The Court’s presumption of inadequacy is novel.  Neither 
petitioners  nor  the  Court  identify  a  single  precedent  in 
which a state actor was entitled to intervene as of right to
defend a statute that  another state actor already was de-
fending.  Rather, the issue in all cases the Court cites was 
whether  any  state  official  would  be  allowed  to  defend  a 
State’s interest when an official charged with doing so de-
clined  to  do  so.    Cf.  Cameron  v.  EMW  Women’s  Surgical 
Center, P. S. C., 595 U. S. ___, ___, n. 5 (2022) (slip op., at 
10, n. 5) (allowing Kentucky attorney general to intervene 
in federal appellate proceeding “to defend Kentucky’s inter-
ests” once “no other official [was] willing to do so”); Karcher 
v.  May,  484  U. S.  72,  75,  81–82  (1987)  (holding  that  two 
state legislators could intervene to defend the constitution-
ality of state law after the attorney general declined to do
so); Bethune-Hill, 587 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4) (rejecting 
argument  that  the  Virginia  House  of  Delegates  and  its 
Speaker,  who  intervened  specifically  to  represent  their
“own” interests rather than those of the State as a whole, 
could displace the attorney general as representative of the 
State); see also Hollingsworth, 570 U. S., at 707, 713 (hold-
ing that proponents of a ballot initiative who “ha[d] no role 
. . .  in  the  enforcement  of ”  the  initiative  and  were  not 
“agents  of  the  State”  lacked  standing  to  defend  it  on  ap-
peal).

None of these precedents establish that state law can re-
quire a federal court to allow additional state actors to in-
tervene when another state actor is already ably and fully
representing the State’s interests in the litigation.  To the 
contrary, it is well settled that the question whether an in-
terest  is  being  “adequately  represented”  is  one  of  federal