Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-376_7l48.pdf
Page Number: 41.0

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

33 

Opinion of the Court 

open and shut. 

Yet Texas advances a few creative arguments for why it
has standing despite these settled rules.  It leads with what 
one  might  call  an  “unclean  hands”  injury:  ICWA  “injures 
Texas by requiring it to break its promise to its citizens that
it  will  be  colorblind  in  child-custody  proceedings.”    Reply 
Brief for Texas 15; id., at 14 (“ICWA forces Texas to violate
its own constitutional obligations”).  This is not the kind of 
“concrete”  and  “particularized”  “invasion  of  a  legally  pro-
tected  interest”  necessary  to  demonstrate  an  “ ‘injury  in
fact.’ ”  Lujan, 504 U. S., at 560.  Were it otherwise, a State 
would  always  have  standing  to  bring  constitutional  chal-
lenges when it is complicit in enforcing federal law.  Texas 
tries to finesse this problem by characterizing ICWA as a 
“fiscal trap,” forcing it to discriminate against its citizens or
lose federal funds.  Brief for Petitioner Texas 39–40.  But 
ICWA is not a Spending Clause statute—Texas bases this 
argument  on  a  vague  reference  to  a  different  Spending 
Clause statute that it does not challenge.  And Texas has 
not  established  that  those  funds,  which  the  State  has  ac-
cepted  for  years,  are  conditioned  on  compliance  with  the 
placement preferences anyway.  See 42 U. S. C. §622; Brief
for Federal Parties 49, n. 6. 

Texas  also  claims  a  direct  pocketbook  injury  associated 
with the costs of keeping records, providing notice in invol-
untary proceedings, and producing expert testimony before 
moving a child to foster care or terminating parental rights.
Reply Brief for Texas 13–14.  But these alleged costs are not 

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jurors struck on the basis of race, because (among other reasons) “[a]s 
the representative of all its citizens, the State is the logical and proper
party to assert the invasion of the constitutional rights of the excluded 
jurors  in  a  criminal  trial.”    Id.,  at  56.    But  McCollum  was  not  a  suit 
against  the  Federal  Government;  moreover,  it  involved  a  “concrete  in-
jury” to the State and “some hindrance to the third party’s ability to pro-
tect its own interests,” neither of which is present here.  Id., at 55–56.