Sentenza

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES HOLLINGSWORTH ET AL. v. PERRY ET AL.

United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co.,200 U. S. 321, 337. 
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
HOLLINGSWORTH ET AL. v. PERRY ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR
THE NINTH CIRCUIT
No. 12–144. Argued March 26, 2013—Decided June 26, 2013
After the California Supreme Court he
ld that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the California Constitution, state voters passed a ballot initiative known as Proposition 8, amending the State
Constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Respondents, same-sex couples who wish to marry, filed suit
in federal court, challenging Proposition 8 under the Due Process and
Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, and naming
as defendants California's Governor and other state and local officials
responsible for enforcing California's marriage laws. The officials re
fused to defend the law, so the District Court allowed petitioners—
the initiative's official proponents—to intervene to defend it. After a
bench trial, the court declared Proposition 8 unconstitutional and enjoined the public officials named as defendants from enforcing the
law. Those officials elected not to appeal, but petitioners did. The
Ninth Circuit certified a question
to the California Supreme Court:
whether official proponents of a ballot initiative have authority to assert the State's interest in defending the constitution
ality of the initiative when public officials refuse
to do so. After the California Supreme Court answered in the affirmative, the Ninth Circuit
concluded that petitioners had stan
ding under federal law to defend
Proposition 8's constitutionality. On the merits, the court affirmed
the District Court's order.
Held
: Petitioners did not have standing
to appeal the District Court's
order. Pp. 5–17.
(a)
Article III of the Constitution confines the judicial power of federal courts to deciding actual “Cases
” or “Controversies.” §2. One essential aspect of this requirement
is that any person invoking the
power of a federal court must demonstrate standing to do so. In oth

HOLLINGSWORTH
v.
PERRY
Syllabus
er words, the litigant must seek a
remedy for a personal and tangible
harm. Although most standing case
s consider whether a plaintiff has
satisfied the requirement when f
iling suit, Article III demands that
an “actual controversy” persist throughout all stages of litigation.
Al
-
ready, LLC
v.
Nike, Inc.
, 568 U. S. ___, ___. Standing “must be met
by persons seeking appellate review, just as it must be met by per
-
sons appearing in courts of first instance.”
Arizonans for Official
English
v.
Arizona
, 520 U. S. 43, 64. The parties do not contest that
respondents had standing to initiate
this case against the California
officials responsible for enforcing Prop
osition 8. But once the District
Court issued its order, respondents no longer had any injury to re
-
dress, and the state officials chose
not to appeal. The only individu
-
als who sought to appeal were peti
tioners, who had intervened in the
District Court, but they had not been ordered to do or refrain from
doing anything. Their only intere
st was to vindicate the constitu
-
tional validity of a generally applic
able California law. As this Court
has repeatedly held, such a “gen
eralized grievance”—no matter how
sincere—is insufficient to
confer standing. See
Lujan
v.
Defenders of
Wildlife
, 504 U. S. 555, 573–574. Petitioners claim that the Califor
-
nia Constitution and election laws
give them a “ ‘unique,' ‘special,'
and ‘distinct' role in the initiative
process,” Reply Brief 5, but that is
only true during the process of en
acting the law. Once Proposition 8
was approved, it became a duly en
acted constitutional amendment.
Petitioners have no role—special
or otherwise—in its enforcement.
They therefore have no “personal st
ake” in defending its enforcement
that is distinguishable from the ge
neral interest of every California
citizen. No matter how deeply committed petitioners may be to up
-
holding Proposition 8, that is not
a particularized interest sufficient
to create a case or controvers
y under Article III. Pp. 5–9.
(b)
Petitioners' arguments to the
contrary are unpersuasive. Pp. 9–
16.
(1)
They claim that they may a
ssert the State's
interest on the
State's behalf, but it is a “fundamen
tal restriction on our authority”
that “[i]n the ordinary course, a litigant . . . cannot rest a claim to re
-
lief on the legal rights or in
terests of third parties.”
Powers
v.
Ohio
,
499 U. S. 400, 410. In
Diamond
v.
Charles
, 476 U. S. 54, for example,
a pediatrician engaged in private
practice was not permitted to de
-
fend the constitutionality of Illinois' abortion law after the State
chose not to appeal an adverse rulin
g. The state attorney general's
“letter of interest,” explaining that
the State's intere
st in the proceed
-
ing was “ ‘essentially co-terminous with' ” Diamond's position,
id.,
at
61, was insufficient, since Diamond was unable to assert an injury of
his own,
id,
at 65. Pp. 9–10.
(2)
Petitioners contend the California Supreme Court's determi
-