Court Opinion

ID: 9431147
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:31:25.788351+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:27.200802
License: Public Domain

Justice White,
concurring in the judgment.
I do not disagree with the Court that Mr. Karcher and Mr. Orechio were made parties to this suit in their official capacities representing the New Jersey General Assembly and the New Jersey Senate; those two entities were also made parties. Neither official intervened in his individual capacity as a legislator, and neither sought to appear in that capacity in the Court of Appeals. In January 1986, after the Court of Appeals had decided the case but before any attempt was made to bring it here on appeal, Karcher and Orechio lost their official standing to represent the New Jersey Legislature. It is clear enough to me that they therefore lost their authority to appeal on behalf of the legislature and that their successors in office automatically became parties in their stead, pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 43(c) (1). If any appeal was to be had on behalf of the legislature *84as it then existed, the appeal was to be taken by the substituted parties, not by Kareher and Orechio. This would be the case even if under New Jersey law, legislative action would be required to authorize the successor officials to drop the appeal. The fact is that there never was a cognizable appeal by the incumbent New Jersey Legislature; an appeal on its behalf never reached this Court. Since Kareher and Orechio did not appeal the Court of Appeals’ judgment in their capacity as individual legislators, or as representatives of the defunct 200th New Jersey Legislature, I do not reach the question whether they would have had standing to maintain this appeal in one of those other capacities.
Last June, we denied a motion by parents and a schoolteacher to intervene as appellants in this Court. 483 U. S. 1017: Since our interest in this case was the validity of the moment-of-silence statute, it might appear that we could save this case and avoid wasting the time and attention we have given it by vacating our prior order, and granting the motion to intervene, which was filed by those seemingly with standing to defend the law. Cf. Mullaney v. Anderson, 342 U. S. 415 (1952). But if in reality we had no jurisdiction to entertain the appeal taken in this case, it is evident that the movants’ efforts to enter the case came too late.
It bears pointing out, however, that we have now acknowledged that the New Jersey Legislature and its authorized representative have the authority to defend the constitutionality of a statute attacked in federal court. Cf. Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919, 940 (1983). Otherwise, there would never have been a valid appeal to the Court of Appeals, in which event, we would not leave standing the judgment of that court, as we now do.
It is also clear that because Kareher and Orechio did not seek to intervene as individual legislators in a nonrepresentative capacity, we again leave for another day the issue whether individual legislators have standing to intervene and *85defend legislation for which they voted. See Burke v. Barnes, 479 U. S. 361 (1987).
Since I agree with the majority that no proper appeal was taken from the judgment below, I concur in its judgment that the “appeal” before us should be dismissed for want of jurisdiction.