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United States House of Representatives v. Burwell

United States District Court for the District of Columbia
N/A (2015)
ELI5:

Rule of Law:

One house of Congress, as an institution, has standing to sue the Executive Branch for an alleged violation of the Constitution's Appropriations Clause, as such a violation constitutes a concrete and particularized institutional injury.


Facts:

  • The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) established two subsidies: Section 1401 premium tax credits and Section 1402 cost-sharing reductions.
  • The House of Representatives alleged that Section 1401 credits are funded by a permanent appropriation, while Section 1402 cost-sharing reductions require annual appropriations from Congress.
  • For Fiscal Year 2014, the Executive Branch, through the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), formally requested that Congress appropriate funds for the Section 1402 cost-sharing program.
  • Congress considered but did not include an appropriation for the Section 1402 program in the Consolidated Appropriations Act for 2014.
  • Despite the lack of a specific annual appropriation, Secretaries Sylvia Burwell and Jacob Lew began spending billions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury to fund the Section 1402 program starting in January 2014.
  • Separately, Secretary Lew, through Treasury regulations, delayed the effective date of the ACA's employer mandate and altered the percentage of employees that must be offered coverage.
  • The House of Representatives passed House Resolution 676, formally authorizing the Speaker of the House to file a lawsuit against the Executive Branch over these actions.

Procedural Posture:

  • The U.S. House of Representatives sued Sylvia Burwell, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Jacob Lew, Secretary of the Treasury, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
  • The Secretaries (defendants) filed a motion to dismiss under Rules 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6), arguing the House lacked standing and failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted.

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Issue:

Does the U.S. House of Representatives have standing to sue the Executive Branch for allegedly spending unappropriated funds and unilaterally altering a federal statute, in violation of the Constitution?


Opinions:

Majority - Judge Rosemary M. Collyer

Yes, in part. The House of Representatives has standing to sue over the alleged violation of the Appropriations Clause, but not over the implementation of the employer mandate. An alleged expenditure of public funds without a congressional appropriation constitutes a concrete, particularized institutional injury to the House's core constitutional power of the purse. This claim concerns a direct violation of a specific constitutional prohibition (Article I, § 9, cl. 7), which injures the House in a way distinct from the public at large. In contrast, the claim regarding the employer mandate is fundamentally a dispute over statutory implementation, not a constitutional violation. Such a claim represents a generalized grievance about the execution of a law, for which the House lacks standing, as it does not inflict a particularized institutional injury and is a matter for the political process or suits by private parties.



Analysis:

This decision establishes a significant precedent by affirming that a single house of Congress has institutional standing to sue the Executive Branch over a violation of the Appropriations Clause. It carefully distinguishes between a cognizable constitutional injury to a legislative body's core power and a non-justiciable political dispute over statutory enforcement. The ruling reinforces the judiciary's role as an arbiter in separation-of-powers conflicts when a specific constitutional command is at stake, potentially enabling more direct legal confrontations between the political branches over fundamental constitutional powers like the power of the purse.

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