Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
Page Number: 51

4 

BIDEN v. NEBRASKA 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Executive Branches.”  Ibid.  A court may address the legal-
ity of a government action only if the person challenging it
has  standing—which  requires  that  the  person  have  suf-
fered a “concrete and particularized injury.”  Ibid.  It is not 
enough for the plaintiff to assert a “generalized grievance[ ]” 
about  government  policy.  Gill  v.  Whitford,  585  U. S.  ___, 
___ (2018) (slip op., at 13).  And critically here, the plaintiff
cannot rest its claim on a third party’s rights and interests.
See Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 499 (1975).  The plaintiff
needs its own stake—a “personal stake”—in the outcome of 
the litigation.  TransUnion, 594 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7). 
If the plaintiff has no such stake, a court must stop in its
tracks.    To  decide  the  case  is  to  exceed  the  permissible
boundaries of the judicial role.

That  is  what  the  Court  does  today.    The  plaintiffs  here
are  six  States:  Arkansas,  Iowa,  Kansas,  Missouri,  Ne-
braska, and South Carolina.  They oppose the Secretary’s 
loan cancellation plan on varied policy and legal grounds.
But  as  everyone  agrees,  those  objections  are  just  general 
grievances;  they  do  not  show  the  particularized  injury
needed to bring suit.  And the States have no straightfor-
ward way of making that showing—of explaining how they
are  harmed  by  a  plan  that  reduces  individual  borrowers’
federal  student-loan  debt.  So  the  States  have  thrown  no 
fewer than four different theories of injury against the wall, 
hoping that a court anxious to get to the merits will say that 
one of them sticks.  The most that can be said of the theory 
the majority selects, proffered solely by Missouri, is that it 
is less risible than the others.  It still contravenes a bedrock 
principle  of  standing  law—that  a  plaintiff  cannot  ride  on 
someone else’s injury.  Missouri is doing just that in relying 
on injuries to the Missouri Higher Education Loan Author-
ity (MOHELA), a legally and financially independent public 
corporation.  And  that  means  the  Court,  by  deciding  this 
case,  exercises  authority  it  does  not  have.  It  violates  the 
Constitution.