From downstairs:

re: #189 goddamnedfrank

Disagree in principle because my fear is that Gorsuch only joined this ruling to tee up a rationale for ruling against the US House in their lawsuit over Trump’s emergency border funding power grab. Also remember that the Courts had no problem with standing in US House v Azar. So think individual chambers still need to be able to sue over actions that by totally bypass their authority and ability to act as a check on the executive. Otherwise we end up codifying a situation where one chamber can totally prevent judicial review by refusing to sign off on a lawsuit.

I could certainly see Gorsuch wishing to offer such an argument, but the situations are in no way similar. The original lawsuit was brought by a private citizen against the commonwealth, arguing that the district map had created 12 racially-biased districts. The lower courts ruled that the VA GOP’s excuse that they’d done that due to the VRA requirements was sound and the case was appealed to SCOTUS where they busted it back down on instructions to use narrower guidelines. The lower courts ruled in ‘17 that the districts were racially-biased and the whole map needed to be redrawn, which led to Ralph Northam failing to get an agreement with the VA DNC to accept a “modified” version of the map. Cue last year, when the GOP-majority in the House of Delegates decided to appeal the lower court ruling after AG Herring refused on cost grounds, claiming that they had standing not because of any violation of separation of powers…but because their jobs were at risk if the new map was accepted.