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Page Number: 19.0

4 

VIRGINIA HOUSE OF DELEGATES v. BETHUNE-HILL 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

tution.  See Va. Const., Art. II, §6.  As far as the House’s 
standing, we must assume that the districting plan enacted 
by the legislature embodies the House’s judgment regard-
ing  the  method  of  selecting  members  that  best  enables  it 
to  serve  the  people  of  the  Commonwealth.    (Whether this 
is a permissible judgment is a merits question, not a ques-
tion  of  standing.    Cf.  Warth  v.  Seldin,  422  U. S.  490,  502 
(1975)).  It therefore follows that discarding that plan and 
substituting another inflicts injury in fact. 
  Our  most  pertinent  precedent  supports  the  standing  of 
the  House  on  this  ground.    In  Sixty-seventh  Minnesota 
State  Senate  v.  Beens,  406  U. S.  187  (1972)  (per  curiam), 
we held that the Minnesota Senate had standing to appeal 
a district court order reapportioning the Senate’s seats.  In 
reaching  that  conclusion,  we  noted  that  “certainly”  such 
an  order  “directly  affected”  the  Senate.    Id.,  at  194.    The 
same  is  true  here.    There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  new 
districting  plan  “directly  affect[s]”  the  House  whose  dis-
tricts  it  redefines  and  whose  legislatively  drawn  districts 
have  been  replaced  with  a  court-ordered  map.    That  the 
Beens  Court  drew  its  “directly  affect[s]”  language  from  a 
case  involving  a  standard  reapportionment  challenge,  see 
Silver  v.  Jordan,  241  F. Supp.  576,  579  (SD  Cal.  1964) 
(per curiam), aff ’d, 381 U. S. 415 (1965) (per curiam), only 
serves  to  confirm  that  the  House’s  injury  is  sufficient  to 
demonstrate standing under Beens. 
  In  an  effort  to  distinguish  Beens,  it  is  argued  that  the 
District  Court  decision  at  issue  there,  which  slashed  the 
number  of  senators  in  half,  “ha[d]  a  distinct  and  more 
direct effect on the body itself than a mere shift in district 
lines.”    Brief  for  United  States  as  Amicus  Curiae  17;  see 
Brief for State Appellees 38.  But even if the effect of the 
court  order  was  greater  in  Beens  than  it  is  here,  it  is  the 
existence—not  the  extent—of  an  injury  that  matters  for 
purposes of Article III standing. 
  The Court suggests that the effects of the court-ordered