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14 

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

at 529–530.  At a high level of abstraction, the union mem-
ber’s  interest  and  the  Secretary’s  might  have  seemed 
closely aligned.  Even so, this Court rejected the Secretary’s 
suggestion that he should be presumed an adequate repre-
sentative of the union member’s interests “unless the court 
. . . find[s] that the Secretary has failed to perform his stat-
utory duty.”  Id., at 538.  The Court acknowledged that the 
Secretary’s  and  the  union  member’s  interests  were  “re-
lated,” but it emphasized that the interests were not “iden-
tical”—the  union member sought relief against his union,
full stop; meanwhile, the Secretary also had to bear in mind 
broader public-policy implications.  Id., at 538–539.  Rather 
than  endorse  a  presumption  of  adequacy,  the  Court  held 
that a movant’s burden in circumstances like these “should 
be treated as minimal.”  Id., at 538, n. 10. 

To be sure, some lower courts have suggested that a pre-
sumption of adequate representation remains appropriate 
in  certain  classes  of  cases.    But  even  taken  on  their  own 
terms,  none  of  these  presumptions  applies  to  cases  like 
ours.  For example, the Fourth Circuit has endorsed a pre-
sumption  of  adequate  representation  where  a  member  of 
the public seeks to intervene to defend a law alongside the 
government.  See 999 F. 3d, at 932–933.  There, the Fourth 
Circuit has reasoned, a court may presume that legally au-
thorized government agents will adequately represent the
public’s interest in its chosen laws.  Here, by contrast, the 
legislative leaders are among those North Carolina has ex-
pressly authorized to participate in litigation to protect the 
State’s interests in its duly enacted laws.  Id., at 951 (Quat-
tlebaum, J., dissenting). 

Similarly, some lower courts have adopted a presumption
of adequate representation in cases where a movant’s inter-
ests  are  identical  to  those  of  an  existing  party.  See  7C 
C. Wright, A. Miller, & M. Kane, Federal Practice and Pro-
cedure § 1909 (3d ed. Supp. 2022) (Wright & Miller).  But 
even the Board concedes that this presumption applies only