Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
Page Number: 55.0

8 

BIDEN v. NEBRASKA 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Shipyards Corp. v. United States Shipping Bd. Emergency 
Fleet Corporation, 258 U. S. 549, 567 (1922).  So this case 
should have been open-and-shut.  Missouri and MOHELA 
are legally, and also financially, “separate entities.”  Meno-
rah, 584 S. W. 2d, at 78.  MOHELA is fully capable of rep-
resenting its own interests, and always has done so before. 
The injury to MOHELA thus does not entitle Missouri—un-
der our normal standing rules—to go to court.

And  those  normal  rules  are  more  than  just  rules:  They 
are, as this case shows, guarantors of our constitutional or-
der.  The requirement that the proper party—the party ac-
tually affected—challenge an action ensures that courts do 
not overstep their proper bounds.  See Clapper v. Amnesty 
Int’l  USA,  568  U. S.  398,  408–409  (2013)  (“Relaxation  of 
standing [rules] is directly related to the expansion of judi-
cial power”).  Without that requirement, courts become “fo-
rums  for  the  ventilation  of  public  grievances”—for  settle-
ment  of  ideological  and  political  disputes.    Valley  Forge 
Christian  College  v.  Americans  United  for  Separation  of 
Church and State, Inc., 454 U. S. 464, 473 (1982).  The kind 
of forum this Court has become today.  Is there a person in
America who thinks Missouri is here because it is worried 
about MOHELA’s loss of loan-servicing fees?  I would like 
to meet him.  Missouri is here because it thinks the Secre-
tary’s loan cancellation plan makes for terrible, inequitable,
wasteful policy.  And so too for Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Ne-
braska,  and  South  Carolina.    And  maybe  all  of  them  are
right.  But that question is not what this Court sits to de-
cide.  That question is “more appropriately addressed in the 
representative branches,” and by the broader public.  Allen, 
468 U. S., at 751.  Our third-party standing rules, like the 
rest  of  our  standing  doctrine,  exist  to  separate  powers  in
that way—to send political issues to political institutions, 
and  retain  only  legal  controversies,  brought  by  plaintiffs 
who  have  suffered  real  legal  injury.    If  MOHELA  had 
brought this suit, we would have had to resolve it, however