Supreme Court Lets Stand Line-Item Veto On Technicality Declining To Vote On Merits Of Law, Justices Merely Dispute Lawmakers’ Right To Sue

The Supreme Court restored the power of the line-item veto to President Clinton on Thursday, using a legal technicality to reject a lawsuit by members of Congress who fought the measure.

The court ruled 7-2 that opponents of the line-item veto had erred in filing their case before Clinton had a chance to use his new power because they did not have legal “standing” to challenge the law.

“These individual members of Congress do not have a sufficient ‘personal stake’ in this dispute and have not alleged a sufficiently concrete injury,” said the court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

The court did not address the fundamental question of whether the line-item veto is constitutional.

Only Justice John Paul Stevens, who joined Justice Stephen Breyer in dissent, said he believed the law was an impermissible violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Clinton hailed the news and promised Thursday to “use this valuable tool for eliminating waste in the federal budget.”

Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia who was the chief plaintiff in the case, said he was disappointed. “However, I remain mindful of the fact that the most important decision in this matter still lies ahead.”

The line-item veto, which allows a president to delete individual appropriations or tax breaks without having to veto an entire bill, was signed into law last year. It has been a popular conservative cause since the Reagan administration and was the first plank in the Republican Contract with America in 1994.

But six members of Congress, led by Byrd, filed suit on Jan. 2, the day after the law took effect. Before Clinton could ever use the veto, US District Judge Thomas P. Jackson struck down the law, saying Congress could not delegate its constitutional powers and duties to legislate to the president.

The Clinton administration and the six lawmakers asked the Supreme Court for a speedy hearing, and the court agreed. During oral arguments on May 27, several justices suggested that the lawmakers would have been on stronger legal footing if they had waited until Clinton had used the veto, or if they had filed the lawsuit in conjunction with citizens affected by an actual line-item veto.

But attorney Alan B. Morrison told the justices that the members of Congress he was representing were indeed affected by the line-item veto.

Morrison used the example of foreign aid debates, in which lawmakers often vote for a package of appropriations that balance the U.S. contributions to Israel and the Arab states. When a president has a line-item veto, said Morrison, the package Congress approved could be carved apart, thus nullifying the intent of a lawmaker’s vote.

Stevens agreed. “It would deny every senator and every representative any opportunity to vote for or against the truncated measure that survives the exercise of the president’s cancellation authority,” he wrote in dissent.

But the majority of the court was unimpressed.

“Appellees have alleged no injury to themselves as individuals … the institutional injury they allege is wholly abstract and widely dispersed … and their attempt to litigate this dispute at this time and in this form is contrary to historical experience,” the court said.

The justices noted that an overwhelming majority of Congress voted to enact the law and suggested that the challenge from the losers in the debate had an air of sour grapes. “In the vote on the Line Item Veto Act, their votes were given full effect,” Rehnquist wrote. “They simply lost.”