Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-58_i425.pdf
Page Number: 23.0

6 

UNITED STATES v. TEXAS 

 GORSUCH, J., concurring
GORSUCH, J., concurring in judgment 

them.  Even so, a vacatur order still does nothing to redress 
the States’ injuries.  The Guidelines merely advise federal 
officials about how to exercise their prosecutorial discretion 
when it comes to deciding which aliens to prioritize for ar-
rest  and  removal.  A  judicial  decree  rendering  the  Guide-
lines a nullity does nothing to change the fact that federal 
officials possess the same underlying prosecutorial discre-
tion.  Nor  does  such  a  decree  require  federal  officials  to 
change how they exercise that discretion in the Guidelines’ 
absence.  It’s a point even the States have acknowledged. 
Tr. of Oral Arg. 82–83; see also id., at 75–77, 125. 

Faced with that difficulty, the States offer this reply.  As 
a practical matter, they say, we can expect federal officials 
to alter their arrest and prosecution priorities in light of a 
judicial opinion reasoning that the Guidelines are unlawful. 
See id., at 80, 82–83.  But this doesn’t work either.  What-
ever a court may say in an opinion does no more to compel
federal officials to change how they exercise their prosecu-
torial discretion than an order vacating the Guidelines.  Nor 
do we measure redressability by asking whether a court’s
legal reasoning may inspire or shame others into acting dif-
ferently.  We measure redressability by asking whether a 
court’s judgment will remedy the plaintiff ’s harms.  As this 
Court recently put it:  “It is a federal court’s judgment, not
its opinion, that remedies an injury; thus it is the judgment,
not  the  opinion,  that  demonstrates  redressability.”  Haa-
land v. Brackeen, 599 U. S. ___, ___ (2023) (slip op., at 32). 
If the rule were otherwise, and courts could “simply assume
that  everyone  . . .  will  honor  the  legal  rationales  that  un-
derlie their decrees, then redressability [would] always ex-
ist.”  Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505 U. S. 788, 825 (1992) 
(Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).
Perhaps  sensing  they  have  run  into  yet  another  road-
block,  the  States  try  one  last  way  around  it.    Fleetingly, 
they  direct  us  to  the  parenthetical  in  §1252(f)(1):    “(other 
than the Supreme Court).”  That language, they say, allows