Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-58_i425.pdf
Page Number: 62

20 

UNITED STATES v. TEXAS 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

In sum, all of these authorities point, not to the majority’s
new  rule,  but  to  the  same  ordinary  questions  we  ask  in
every case—whether the plaintiff has a concrete, traceable, 
and redressable injury. 

C 
Despite the majority’s capacious understanding of execu-
tive discretion, today’s opinion assures the reader that the 
decision “do[es] not suggest that federal courts may never
entertain  cases  involving  the  Executive  Branch’s  alleged
failure to make more arrests or bring more prosecutions,” 
despite its otherwise broad language covering the “exercise
of enforcement discretion over whether to arrest or prose-
cute.”  Ante,  at  5,  9.    The  majority  lists  five  categories  of 
cases in which a court would—or at least might—have Ar-
ticle  III  jurisdiction  to  entertain  a  challenge  to  arrest  or
prosecution policies, but this list does nothing to allay con-
cern about the Court’s new path.  The Court does not iden-
tify any characteristics that are shared by all these catego-
ries and that distinguish them from cases in which it would
not find standing.  In addition, the Court is unwilling to say
that  cases  in  four  of  these  five  categories  are actually  ex-
empted from its general rule, and the one remaining cate-
gory  is  exceedingly  small.  I  will  discuss  these  categories 
one by one. 

First,  the  majority  distinguishes  “selective-prosecution”
suits by a plaintiff “to prevent his or her own prosecution,” 
ante,  at  9.  But  such  claims  are ordinarily  brought  as  de-
fenses  in  ongoing  prosecutions,  as  in  the  cases  the  Court 
cites, and are rarely brought in standalone actions where a 
plaintiff  must  prove  standing.    This  category  is  therefore
little more than a footnote to the Court’s general rule. 

Second, the majority grants that “the standing analysis 
might differ when Congress elevates de facto injuries to the 
status of legally cognizable injuries,” and it hypothesizes a
situation  in  which  Congress  “(i)  specifically  authorize[s]