Also known as: line-item veto act · LIVA
Written by attorneys — see sources 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.
The Line Item Veto Act was passed by the Senate on March 27, 1996, by a vote of 69 to 31. All four appellee Senators voted against the bill. The House of Representatives passed the identical bill the next day by a vote of 232 to 177, with both appellee Congressmen voting nay. The President signed the Act on April 4, 1996, and it became effective on January 1, 1997. The appellees consist of six Members of the 104th Congress, including four Senators and two Congressmen. Shortly after the Act took effect, they filed suit in the District Court for the District of Columbia against the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. The complaint alleged that the Act unconstitutionally expanded the President's power and violated the requirements of bicameral passage and presentment. The District Court denied the motion to dismiss for lack of standing and ripeness. On April 10, 1997, it granted summary judgment to the appellees and declared the Act unconstitutional. The court also granted intervention to the National Treasury Employees Union and a group of Congressmen. Appellants filed a jurisdictional statement, and the Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction on April 23, 1997. The Court established an expedited briefing schedule and heard oral argument on May 27, 1997. The House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group and the Senate appeared as amici curiae urging reversal on the merits without taking a position on standing.
View caseThe 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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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…