Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-248_4fc5.pdf
Page Number: 13.0

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

9 

Opinion of the Court 

of [their] own statutes.’ ”  Cameron v. EMW Women’s Surgi-
cal Center, P. S. C., 595 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op., at 8) 
(quoting Taylor, 477 U. S., at 137).  No one questions that
States may organize themselves in a variety of ways.  After 
all, the separation of government powers has long been rec-
ognized  as  vital  to  the  preservation  of  liberty,  and  it  is 
through the power to “structure . . . its government, and the 
character  of  those  who  exercise  government  authority,
[that] a State defines itself as a sovereign.”  Gregory v. Ash-
croft, 501 U. S. 452, 460 (1991).  Nor does anyone question
that, when a State chooses to allocate authority among dif-
ferent officials who do not answer to one another, different 
interests and perspectives, all important to the administra-
tion of state government, may emerge.  See, e.g., Brnovich 
v. Democratic National Committee, 594 U. S. ___ (2021) (Ar-
izona’s secretary of state and attorney general took opposite
sides).

Appropriate respect for these realities suggests that fed-
eral  courts  should  rarely  question that  a  State’s  interests
will be practically impaired or impeded if its duly author-
ized representatives are excluded from participating in fed-
eral  litigation  challenging  state  law.    To  hold  otherwise 
would not only evince disrespect for a State’s chosen means 
of  diffusing  its  sovereign  powers  among  various  branches 
and officials.  It would not only risk turning a deaf federal
ear to voices the State has deemed crucial to understanding
the full range of its interests.  It would encourage plaintiffs
to make strategic choices to control which state agents they
will face across the aisle in federal court.  It would tempt 
litigants to select as their defendants those individual offi-
cials they consider most sympathetic to their cause or most 
inclined to settle favorably and quickly.  All of which would 
risk a hobbled litigation rather than a full and fair adver-
sarial testing of the State’s interests and arguments.

Nor are state interests the only interests at stake.   Re-