On July 30, 2014, the House of Representatives passed H.Res. 676 , which authorizes the Speaker of the House to initiate a civil lawsuit against the President and/or officials and employees of the executive branch for a failure to act consistent with their duties under the Constitution and federal law. In his public comments prior to introduction of H.Res. 676 , Speaker John Boehner stated that the purpose of the suit would be to compel the President to follow his oath of office and comply with his constitutional responsibility to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Speaker Boehner has stated that the suit will focus on the Obama Administration's decision to delay implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's (ACA's) employer responsibility requirements (employer mandate). In 2013, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced that it would provide transition relief that would delay the implementation of new excise taxes on employers that do not comply with the ACA's employer mandate for one year, until 2015. In announcing his intent to seek a resolution authorizing a lawsuit, the Speaker stated such a resolution will authorize the House to file suit over the way President Obama unilaterally changed the employer mandate. In 2013, the president changed the health care law without a vote of Congress, effectively creating his own law by literally waiving the employer mandate and the penalties for failing to comply with it.... The Constitution states that the president must faithfully execute the laws, and spells out that only the Legislative Branch has the power to legislate.... The House has an obligation to stand up for the Legislative Branch, and the Constitution, and that is exactly what we will do. Disputes between Congress and the executive branch regarding the implementation of federal law are common, but has one house of Congress ever previously authorized the initiation of a lawsuit to challenge executive branch action in federal court? These types of suits are certainly rare, but it appears as though a house of Congress (or a committee acting on behalf of a house) has filed a lawsuit against the executive branch at least four times in the past 41 years. Three of these suits— Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities v. Nixon , Committee on the Judiciary v. Miers , and Committee on Oversight and Government Reform v. Holder —were filed by committees, with the authorization of their full houses, in an attempt to seek judicial enforcement of a congressional subpoena. The fourth suit, Department of Commerce v. U.S. House of Representatives , was filed pursuant to a statutory provision authorizing such suit in an attempt to halt a Census Bureau plan to use statistical sampling in the 2000 census. The rarity with which such disputes between Congress and the executive branch are litigated suggests that these kinds of conflicts are primarily resolved outside the courts. Commentators have offered various reasons why federal courts should or should not litigate these types of cases between the political branches. On the one hand, some argue that judicial involvement is necessary to prevent the executive branch from exceeding its authority and eroding legislative branch power, thereby creating imbalance in the separation of powers. They argue that the ability of one house of Congress to initiate litigation is particularly important when executive actions may not create traditional injuries, preventing private plaintiffs from challenging the action themselves. On the other hand, other commentators note the Constitution's grant of limited power to the judiciary, and worry that allowing such disputes between the two political branches to be resolved by the judiciary would lead to an aggrandizement of the political power of the judiciary. If the Speaker were to file a suit pursuant to H.Res. 676 , the executive branch defendants are likely to raise questions about the justiciability of such a claim. This report will discuss one such justiciability question: whether or not an authorized house of Congress has standing to sue the executive branch regarding the manner in which it executes the law. H.Res. 676 authorizes the Speaker to "initiate or intervene in one or more civil actions on behalf of the House of Representatives ... " Such a suit may be filed in any federal court of competent jurisdiction and can seek any appropriate relief. The suit may seek relief regarding the failure of the President, the head of any department or agency, or any other officer or employee of the executive branch, to act in a manner consistent with that official's duties under the Constitution and laws of the United States with respect to implementation of any provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, title I or subtitle B of title II of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, including any amendment made by such provision, or any other related provision of law, including a failure to implement any such provision. Based on the text of the resolution, the litigation is not restricted to challenging the implementation of any specific provision of the ACA. However, based on public comments from Speaker Boehner, it appears as though the suit may focus on the decision to delay enforcement of the ACA's employer mandate, accomplished through the IRS's provision of transition relief. Additionally, the suit could be filed against any executive branch officer or employee, and the resolution does not require the President to be a defendant. H.Res. 676 also authorized the House Office of General Counsel, at the Speaker's direction, to represent the House in any civil suit. The Office may hire outside counsel to assist in this representation. On August 25, 2014, Kerry Kircher, the General Counsel, entered into a contract with BakerHostetler to serve as such outside counsel. David B. Rivkin, a partner at BakerHostetler, "will be principally responsible for conducting the Litigation on behalf of the [firm and] ... personally will perform a substantial portion of the services contracted for ... " Unless terminated at an earlier time, the contract terminates on the earlier date "when a final appealable judgment is rendered in a United States District Court ... " or at the expiration of the 113 th Congress. At the time of publication, a lawsuit pursuant to H.Res. 676 has not yet been filed. Therefore, the details of any such suit remain unclear, including the identity of the defendants, the alleged injury, and the relief that may be sought. Generally, the doctrine of standing is a threshold procedural question that does not turn on the merits of a plaintiff's complaint, but rather on whether the particular plaintiff has a legal right to a judicial determination on the issues before the court. The law with respect to standing is a mix of both constitutional requirements and prudential considerations. Article III of the Constitution specifically limits the exercise of federal judicial power to "cases" and "controversies." Accordingly, the courts have "consistently declined to exercise any powers other than those which are strictly judicial in nature." Thus, it has been said that "the law of Article III standing is built on a single basic idea—the idea of separation of powers." Given this concern for separation of powers, the "standing inquiry [is] especially rigorous when reaching the merits of [a] dispute would force [the Court] to decide whether an action taken by one of the other two branches of the Federal Government was unconstitutional." To satisfy the constitutional standing requirements in Article III, the Supreme Court imposes three required elements. First, the plaintiff must allege a personal injury-in-fact, which is actual or imminent, concrete, and particularized. Second, the injury must be "fairly traceable to the defendant's allegedly unlawful conduct." Third, the injury must be "likely to be redressed by the requested relief." In addition to the constitutional questions posed by the doctrine of standing, federal courts also follow a well-developed set of prudential principles that are relevant to a standing inquiry. Similar to the constitutional requirements, these limits are "founded in concern about the proper—and properly limited—role of the courts in a democratic society," but are judicially created. Unlike their constitutional counterparts, prudential standing requirements "can be modified or abrogated by Congress." These prudential principles require that (1) the plaintiff assert his own legal rights and interests, rather than those of a third party; (2) the plaintiff's complaint fall within the "zone of interests" protected or regulated by the statute or constitutional guarantee in question; and (3) the plaintiff not assert "abstract questions of wide public significance which amount to generalized grievances pervasively shared and most appropriately addressed in the representative branches." As applied to congressional plaintiffs, the doctrine of standing has generally been invoked only in cases challenging executive branch actions or acts of Congress and has focused on the injury prong of standing. The case law with respect to congressional plaintiffs can be broken down into two categories: (1) cases where individual Members file suit and (2) cases where congressional institutions (committees or houses of Congress) file suit. Following the Supreme Court's 1997 decision in Raines v. Byrd , the case law regarding category one, individual Member suits, has been fairly settled. However, the same cannot be said for suits under category two. Suits brought by congressional institutions have been rare, and generally involve vindicating congressional rights to access specific information from the executive branch. Therefore, the federal courts have not determined whether a congressional institutional plaintiff would have standing to sue based on the type of injury that is likely to be asserted in a suit brought pursuant to H.Res. 676 (i.e., an institutional injury unrelated to information access). While there is no precedent that directly answers this question, existing case law can serve as guidance in analyzing how a court may confront this situation. This report will begin by examining areas in which the courts have provided relatively definitive analysis regarding congressional standing. First, it will examine Raines and its progeny, to explain how a court analyzes assertions of institutional injuries when the plaintiff is an individual Member. Next, the report will discuss cases brought by institutional plaintiffs based on institutional injuries regarding information access, namely suits seeking to enforce a congressional subpoena. By looking at these cases, we can identify whether the courts have established criteria that are necessary, but not sufficient, for institutional plaintiffs to establish standing.