Also known as: line-item veto act · LIVA
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A federal statute that purported to authorize the President to cancel specific items of discretionary spending and limited tax benefits in appropriation and tax bills after signing them into law. The statute was held invalid because it permitted unilateral alteration of enacted legislation outside the requirements of bicameralism and presentment.
President Lars Lindstrom signed an appropriations bill funding a new federal facility. He then issued a cancellation notice targeting only the facility's construction allocation. Liberty Trust, the contractor awarded the project, sued to enforce the full funding. The court held that the cancellation had no legal effect because the statute granting such authority exceeded constitutional limits on executive power.
Senator Logan Lane and five colleagues who had opposed the Line Item Veto Act brought suit after the President canceled a tax benefit they had supported. The legislators claimed the cancellations diluted their voting power on appropriations measures. The court dismissed the action, ruling that the asserted institutional injury was too generalized to satisfy Article III requirements for standing.
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The Arizona State Legislature challenged a redistricting commission created by voter initiative, arguing that the commission's authority diluted the legislature's control over electoral maps. The legislature cited prior precedent involving the Line Item Veto Act to support its standing claim. The court rejected the analogy, holding that the institutional injury alleged was not sufficiently particularized to confer standing on the body as a whole.
The statute permitted the President to cancel discrete provisions of enacted laws, which amounted to unilateral amendment or repeal. Such action violates the constitutional requirement that changes to statutes occur only through bicameral passage and presentment.
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Individual legislators lacked standing because the claimed injury was an abstract dilution of legislative power shared equally by all members. Article III requires a concrete, particularized injury rather than a generalized institutional grievance.
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The Act attempted to bypass the bicameralism and presentment requirements of Article I by allowing post-enactment executive cancellation of statutory provisions. The Constitution assigns the power to alter or repeal laws exclusively to Congress through the full legislative process.
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…filed a dissenting opinion, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and O’Connor and Scalia, JJ., joined as to Part III. Syllabus The Line Item Veto Act of 1996 (Act) allows the President to “cancel” certain items in appropriation and tax bills that have been signed into law. The Act specifies that the President may cancel a “discretionary…