Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-248_4fc5.pdf
Page Number: 25.0

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

3 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

explaining that petitioners lacked “a significantly protecta-
ble  interest  in  . . .  defending  the  constitutionality  of  S.B.
824  sufficient  to  warrant  a  right  to  intervene  under  Rule
24(a)(2)”  because  the  Governor  and  state  respondents  re-
mained in the suit and were adequately defending the chal-
lenged law.  App. to Pet. for Cert. 168.  The court also rea-
soned that allowing petitioners to intervene would “ ‘hinder,
rather than enhance, judicial economy’ ” and would “ ‘unnec-
essarily  complicate  and  delay’  the  various  stages  of  this
case,”  including  discovery,  dispositive  motions,  and  trial. 
Id., at 180.  The court granted petitioners’ motion to partic-
ipate in the suit as amici, however, and assured petitioners 
that they could renew their motion to intervene if the attor-
ney general, as counsel for the existing state parties, “de-
clined to defend the lawsuit.”  Id., at 157.1  Petitioners did 
not appeal.  Shortly thereafter, the District Court granted
the  Governor’s  motion  to  dismiss him  from  the  suit.    The 
attorney general continued representing state respondents 
in the litigation.

Six  weeks  after  the  District  Court  denied  their  original
intervention  motion,  petitioners  filed  a  renewed  motion, 
again  seeking  both  to  intervene  as  a  matter  of  right  and 
permissively.  Petitioners  primarily  reiterated  arguments 
made in their first motion for intervention, adding that this 
Court’s decision in Virginia House of Delegates v. Bethune-
Hill,  587  U. S.  ___  (2019),  “clarified”  the  interests  they 
sought to represent.  App. 159.  They also asserted that the 
attorney general’s conduct in the parallel state-court litiga-
tion, in which petitioners were codefendants, supported pe-
titioners’ argument for intervention.  Specifically, petition-
ers argued that the attorney general moved to dismiss five 
of six claims in the state-court litigation, but not the sixth;
failed to defend against NAACP respondents’ motion for a 

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1 Petitioners submitted an amicus brief supporting state respondents’
opposition to NAACP respondents’ motion for a preliminary injunction.