Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-248_4fc5.pdf
Page Number: 31.0

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

9 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

law, not state law.  See 7C C. Wright, A. Miller, & M. Kane, 
Federal Practice and Procedure §1905 (3d ed. Supp. 2022)
(Wright,  Miller,  &  Kane)  (citing  cases  and  observing  that 
“[i]t is wholly clear that the right to intervene in a civil ac-
tion pending in a United States District Court is governed
by Rule 24 and not by state law”).  Petitioners themselves, 
until  they  arrived  at  this  Court,  never  adopted  the  view 
that state law can supplant a federal court’s responsibility 
to decide adequacy of representation in an individual case.
The  Court’s  conclusion  that  state  law  can  dictate  what 
counts as “adequate” representation also suffers from prac-
tical infirmities.  If state law can require a federal court to
allow a second state actor to intervene to represent a differ-
ent “perspective,” ante, at 16, what is to stop a State from
designating 3, 4, or 10 or more officials as necessary parties
to  suits  challenging  state  law?  The  Court  acknowledges 
this  concern  but  offers  no  limiting  principle  grounded  in
Rule 24(a)(2).  Ante, at 17.  That is because it cannot: Under 
the Court’s logic, a federal court would have no choice but 
to allow all 10 or more state officials to intervene. 

This  result  contravenes  Rule  24(a)(2)  and  the  practical
realities of litigation that it reflects.  Federal law gives dis-
trict courts responsibility to assess, in the first instance, the 
adequacy of a party’s representation because those courts
are most familiar with that representation and are respon-
sible for managing their dockets and streamlining proceed-
ings.  Rule 24(a)(2) thus does not require district courts to
allow  intervention  where  interests  are  adequately  repre-
sented because such intervention would be duplicative and 
inefficient.  This Rule accounts for the fact that mandatory
intervention  imposes  costs  on  the  original  parties,  on  the
court, and on all others whose interests depend on timely
resolution of a given case.  Forcing federal courts “to accom-
modate [a] cacophony of parties,” 999 F. 3d, at 934, as the 
Court’s  logic  today  requires,  will  result  in  an  “intractable
procedural mess,” leaving district courts with “no basis for