Court Opinion

ID: 9428815
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:24:51.85345+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:14.039397
License: Public Domain

Justice Powell,
with whom Justice Marshall, Justice Rehnquist, and Justice Stevens join, dissenting.
In Cory v. White, ante, at 89, the Court today reaffirms the holding of Worcester County Trust Co. v. Riley, 302 U. S. 292 (1937), that “inconsistent determinations by the courts of two States as to the domicile of a taxpayer [do] not raise a substantial federal constitutional question.” Under Worcester County there is no constitutional bar to both Texas *170and California taxing the Hughes estate on the ground that he was a domiciliary.
Having reaffirmed the authority of Worcester County, the Court concludes that “California and Texas are asserting inconsistent claims and are undeniably adversaries in [the interpleader action].” Ante, at 165. But its own premises will not support this conclusion. If both States legally can tax the Hughes estate, a controversy between them would arise only if both were to obtain money judgments against the estate and, further, if the estate then were to prove insufficient to satisfy both claims. Yet it is no more clear today than it was in 1978, when we unanimously decided California v. Texas, 437 U. S. 601 (1978), that this situation ever will occur. Thus, under the Court’s own assumptions, there is no ripe controversy between the States, and no basis for our consideration of the original complaint in No. 88, Original.
As if discomfited by the logic of its position, the Court argues that the jurisdictional allegations here at least are “no more speculative,” ante, at 166, n. 1, than those in Texas v. Florida, 306 U. S. 398 (1939). Yet as Justice Stewart argued persuasively in our 1978 decision in California v. Texas, supra, it is inescapable that Texas v. Florida was wrongly decided. See 437 U. S., at 606, 611-612 (Stewart, J., concurring). The mere possibility of inconsistent state determinations of domicile, resulting in a still more remote possibility of the estate’s being insufficient to satisfy the competing claims, simply does not give rise to a case or controversy in the constitutional sense. “The necessity that the plaintiff who seeks to invoke judicial power stand to profit in some personal interest remains an Art. Ill requirement. A federal court cannot ignore this requirement without overstepping its assigned role in our system of adjudicating only actual cases and controversies.” Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Org., 426 U. S. 26, 39 (1976). See Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, 454 U. S. 464, 472 (1982); Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 508 (1975).
*171Nor is the Court entitled to base its finding of original jurisdiction on an “analogy” between the original action and “a bill in the nature of interpleader.” Ante, at 167. Under the Interpleader Act, the stakeholder is the “plaintiff.” 28 U. S. C. § 1335. Having been notified of claims by two or more “claimants,” the stakeholder normally would have standing to litigate the validity of each of the individual claims. The presence of these justiciable controversies between stakeholder and claimants satisfies the “case or controversy” requirement of Art. III. Interpleader jurisdiction merely provides for convenient resolution in a single forum. Interpleader jurisdiction thus is irrelevant to the question whether there is an independently justiciable controversy “between” States.