Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/06pdf/05-1120.pdf
Page Number: 41

Cite as:  549 U. S. ____ (2007) 

3 

ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting 

Relaxing  Article  III  standing  requirements  because
asserted  injuries  are  pressed  by  a  State,  however,  has  no
basis in our jurisprudence, and support for any such “spe-
cial  solicitude”  is  conspicuously  absent  from  the  Court’s
opinion.  The general judicial review provision cited by the 
Court,  42  U. S. C.  §7607(b)(1),  affords  States  no  special 
rights  or  status.    The  Court  states  that  “Congress  has 
ordered  EPA  to  protect  Massachusetts  (among  others)”
through  the  statutory  provision  at  issue,  §7521(a)(1),  and 
that  “Congress  has  .  .  .  recognized  a  concomitant  proce-
dural  right  to  challenge  the  rejection  of  its  rulemaking
petition  as  arbitrary  and  capricious.”    Ante,  at  16.    The 
reader  might  think  from  this  unfortunate  phrasing  that
Congress said something about the rights of States in this 
particular  provision  of  the  statute.    Congress  knows  how 
to  do  that  when  it  wants  to,  see,  e.g.,  §7426(b)  (affording 
States  the  right  to  petition  EPA  to  directly  regulate  cer-
tain  sources  of  pollution),  but  it  has  done  nothing  of  the 
sort  here.  Under  the  law  on  which  petitioners  rely,  Con-
gress treated public and private litigants exactly the same. 
Nor  does  the  case  law  cited  by  the  Court  provide  any
support for the notion that Article III somehow implicitly
treats  public  and  private  litigants  differently.    The  Court 
has  to  go  back  a  full  century  in  an  attempt  to  justify  its
novel standing rule, but even there it comes up short.  The 
Court’s  analysis  hinges  on  Georgia  v.  Tennessee  Copper 
Co.,  206  U. S.  230  (1907)—a  case  that  did  indeed  draw  a
distinction  between  a  State  and  private  litigants,  but 
solely  with  respect  to  available  remedies.  The  case  had 
nothing to do with Article III standing. 

In  Tennessee  Copper,  the  State  of  Georgia  sought  to 
enjoin  copper  companies  in  neighboring  Tennessee  from
discharging  pollutants  that  were  inflicting  “a  wholesale 
destruction  of  forests,  orchards  and  crops”  in  bordering
Georgia  counties.  Id., at  236.    Although  the State  owned 
very  little  of  the  territory  allegedly  affected,  the  Court