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10 

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

specting the States’ “plan[s] for the distribution of govern-
mental  powers”  also  serves  important  national  interests. 
Mayor of Philadelphia v. Educational Equality League, 415 
U. S. 605, 615, n. 13 (1974).  It better enables the States to 
serve as a “balance” to federal authority.  Bond v. United 
States, 564 U. S. 211, 221 (2011).  It permits States to ac-
commodate  government  to  local  conditions  and  circum-
stances.  See ibid.  And it allows States to serve as labora-
tories of “innovation and experimentation” from which the 
federal government itself may learn and from which a “mo-
bile citizenry” benefits.  Gregory, 501 U. S., at 458.  Finally,
a federal court tasked with testing the constitutionality of 
state law wields weighty “authority over a State’s most fun-
damental  political  processes.”  Alden  v.  Maine,  527  U. S. 
706,  751  (1999).  Permitting  the  participation  of  lawfully
authorized  state  agents  promotes  informed  federal-court 
decisionmaking and avoids the risk of setting aside duly en-
acted  state  law  based  on  an  incomplete  understanding  of
relevant state interests. 

This Court’s teachings on these scores have been many, 
clear,  and  recent.  Earlier  this  Term  in  Cameron,  we  ex-
plained that a State is free to “empowe[r] multiple officials 
to defend its sovereign interests in federal court.”  595 U. S., 
at ___ (slip op., at 8).  Three Terms ago in Bethune-Hill, we 
observed that “ ‘a State must be able to designate agents to
represent it in federal court’ ” and may authorize its legisla-
ture “to litigate on the State’s behalf, either generally or in 
a defined set of cases.”  587 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 4– 
5).  “[T]he choice belongs to” the sovereign State.  Id., at ___ 
(slip  op.,  at  5). 
In  Hollingsworth  v.  Perry,  this  Court 
stressed that “state law may provide for other officials,” be-
sides an attorney general, “to speak for the State in federal 
court” as some States have done for their “presiding legis-
lative officers.”  570 U. S. 693, 710 (2013).  And in Karcher 
v.  May,  this  Court  held  that  two  state  legislative  leaders