Source: https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/524-u-s-417-605447150
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 16:11:08+00:00

Document:
Party Name: CLINTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, et al. v. CITY OF NEW YORK et al.
CLINTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, et al.
Last Term, this Court determined on expedited review that Members of Congress did not have standing to maintain a constitutional challenge to the Line Item Veto Act (Act), 2 U.S.C. § 691 et seq., because they had not alleged a sufficiently concrete injury. Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811. Within two months, the President exercised his authority under the Act by canceling § 4722(c) of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which waived the Federal Government's statutory right to recoupment of as much as $2.6 billion in taxes that the State of New York had levied against Medicaid providers, and § 968 of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, which permitted the owners of certain food refiners and processors to defer recognition of capital gains if they sold their stock to eligible farmers' cooperatives. Appellees, claiming they had been injured, filed separate actions against the President and other officials challenging the cancellations. The plaintiffs in the first case are the City of New York, two hospital associations, one hospital, and two unions representing health care employees. The plaintiffs in the second are the Snake River farmers' cooperative and one of its individual members. The District Court consolidated the cases, determined that at least one of the plaintiffs in each had standing under Article III, and ruled, inter alia, that the Act's cancellation procedures violate the Presentment Clause, Art. I, § 7, cl. 2. This Court again expedited its review.
about the dispute's ripeness, but more importantly because the parties have alleged a "personal stake" in having an actual injury redressed, rather than an "institutional injury" that is "abstract and widely dispersed." 521 U.S., at 829. There is no merit to the Government's contention that, in both cases, the appellees have not suffered actual injury because their claims are too speculative and, in any event, are advanced by the wrong parties. Because New York State now has a multibillion dollar contingent liability that had been eliminated by § 4722(c), the State, and the appellees, suffered an immediate, concrete injury the moment the President canceled the section and deprived them of its benefits. The argument that New York's claim belongs to the State, not appellees, fails in light of New York statutes demonstrating that both New York City and the appellee providers will be assessed for substantial portions of any recoupment payments the State has to make. Similarly, the President's cancellation of § 968 inflicted a sufficient likelihood of economic injury on the Snake River appellees to establish standing under this Court's precedents, cf. Bryant v. Yellen, 447 U.S. 352, 368. The assertion that, because processing facility sellers would have received the tax benefits, only they have standing to challenge the § 968 cancellation not only ignores the fact that the cooperatives were the intended beneficiaries of § 968, but also overlooks the fact that more than one party may be harmed by a defendant and therefore have standing. Pp. 428-436.
2. The Act's cancellation procedures violate the Presentment Clause. Pp. 436-449.
prohibition. The Article I procedures governing statutory enactment were the product of the great debates and compromises that produced the Constitution itself. Familiar historical materials provide abundant support for the conclusion that the power to enact statutes may only "be exercised in accord with a single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered, procedure." Chadha, 462 U.S., at 951. What has emerged in the present cases, however, are not the product of the "finely wrought" procedure that the Framers designed, but truncated versions of two bills that passed both Houses. Pp. 436-441.
(b) The Court rejects two related Government arguments. First, the contention that the cancellations were merely exercises of the President's discretionary authority under the Balanced Budget Act and the Taxpayer Relief Act, read in light of the previously enacted Line Item Veto Act, is unpersuasive. Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 693, on which the Government relies, suggests critical differences between this cancellation power and the President's statutory power to suspend import duty exemptions that was there upheld: such suspension was contingent on a condition that did not predate its statute, the duty to suspend was absolute once the President determined the contingency had arisen, and the suspension executed congressional policy. In contrast, the Act at issue authorizes the President himself to effect the repeal of laws, for his own policy reasons, without observing Article I, § 7, procedures. Second, the contention that the cancellation authority is no greater than the President's traditional statutory authority to decline to spend appropriated funds or to implement specified tax measures fails because this Act, unlike the earlier laws, gives the President the unilateral power to change the text of duly enacted statutes. Pp. 442-447.
in which the President will play a different role, such change must come through the Article V amendment procedures. Pp. 447-449.

References: v. 
 § 691
 v. 
 § 4722
 § 968
 § 7
 § 4722
 § 968
 v. 
 § 968
 § 968
 v. 
 § 7