UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Plaintiff, v. Case No. 1:19-cv-00969 (TNM) STEVEN T. MNUCHIN, in his official capacity as Secretary of the Department of the Treasury et al., Defendants. MEMORANDUM OPINION Few ideas are more central to the American political tradition than the doctrine of separation of powers. Our Founders emerged from the Revolution determined to establish a government incapable of repeating the tyranny from which the Thirteen Colonies escaped. They did so by splitting power across three branches of the federal government and by providing each the tools required to preserve control over its functions. The “great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department,” James Madison explained, “consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.” The Federalist No. 51. This is a case about whether one chamber of Congress has the “constitutional means” to conscript the Judiciary in a political turf war with the President over the implementation of legislation. The U.S. House of Representatives seeks to enjoin the Secretaries and Departments of the Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, and the Interior (collectively, the “Administration”) from spending certain funds to build a wall along our southern border. The House argues that this expenditure would violate the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution and usurp Congress’s authority. This harm, the House suggests, constitutes an “institutional injury” supporting Article III standing. The Administration disagrees. The Judiciary cannot reach the merits of this dispute, it contends, because the Constitution grants the House no standing to litigate these claims. The Administration is correct. The “complete independence” of the Judiciary is “peculiarly essential” under our Constitutional structure, and this independence requires that the courts “take no active resolution whatever” in political fights between the other branches. See The Federalist No. 78 (Alexander Hamilton). And while the Constitution bestows upon Members of the House many powers, it does not grant them standing to hale the Executive Branch into court claiming a dilution of Congress’s legislative authority. The Court therefore lacks jurisdiction to hear the House’s claims and will deny its motion. I. The House and the President have been engaged in a protracted public fight over funding for the construction of a barrier along the border with Mexico. Following the longest partial shutdown of the Federal Government in history, Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2019 (the “CAA”), which provided $1.375 billion for new border fencing in the Rio Grande Valley. See Pub. L. No. 116-6 (2019). The President had sought much more. See Letter from Acting Dir., Office of Mgmt. & Budget to Senate Comm. On Appropriations (Jan. 6, 2019) (requesting “$5.7 billion for construction of a steel barrier for the Southwest border”). 1 1 The Court takes judicial notice of the government documents cited in this Opinion as “sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned.” Fed. R. Evid. 201. See Cannon v. District of Columbia, 717 ...
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