I’ve gotten lots of feedback, all of it speculative, on who could have standing to sue to stop the unconstitutional grant of a vote in the House to D.C., ranging from individual voters to a member of Congress to any one of the several states. But as Von Spakovsky noted at the end of his piece yesterday, senators sued in the ’90s to stop a D.C. voting bill, and lost for lack of standing. Likewise, several times states and congressmen have sued to prevent the inclusion of illegal aliens in the census count used for apportionment, and they also lost for lack of standing.

One interesting idea from a reader:

It seems to me that a legislator who votes for a bill that is defeated or passed by one vote, with the DC representative in the majority, has standing to sue. He has an actual injury — his vote was nullified by the illegitimate, unconstitutional vote of the DC representative, and that nullification caused a bill he supported/opposed to be defeated/enacted.

And another:

Another avenue would be for Maryland or Virginia to sue since those territories were given to locate a non-partisan national capitol on them. By including them (the voting reps) as a separate legal entity (District of Columbia) – then some part of that agreement would be violated and Maryland or Virginia would have a claim that part of their representation had been unlawfully taken from them (in light of the original agreement – Constitution).

Actually, this would only apply to Maryland, since the Virginia portion of D.C. was retroceded in the 1840s, which is what we should do with all but the core of today’s D.C. But Maryland, being a Democratic state, almost certainly won’t sue over D.C. voting in the House.

Finally, a reader sent a link to a more hopeful prognosis. An observer (who supports a D.C. seat in the House but insists it be done the right way, by amendment) thinks standing won’t be a problem:

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who has repeatedly testified to the unconstitutionality of the DCHRVA and other bills like it, says that while federal courts have made it increasingly difficult in recent decades to challenge government decisions, it’s hard to imagine a court not granting legal standing to a challenge in this case.
“There’s an array of potential litigants,” he says, including District residents, members of Congress, residents of other states. “My expectation is that at least one group of those plaintiffs will be found to have standing. It will be very hard for Congress to say that it can change the structure of the institution with no judicial review.”