Kagan, J., dissenting
Remaining is the majority’s unsupported—and insupportable—idea that the Secretary’s plan “necessarily” hurts Missouri because it “impair[s]” MOHELA’s “efforts to aid [the State’s] college students.” Ante, at 9. To begin with, it seems unlikely that the reduction in MOHELA’s revenues resulting from the discharge would make it harder for students to “access student loans,” as the majority contends. Ante, at 8. MOHELA is not a lender; it services loans others have made. Which is probably why even Missouri has never tried to show that the Secretary’s plan will so detrimentally affect the State’s borrowers. In any event—and more important—such a harm to citizens cannot provide an escape hatch out of MOHELA’s legal and financial independence. That is because of another canonical limit on a State’s ability to ride on third parties: A State may never sue the Federal Government based on its citizens’ rights and interests. See Alfred L. Snapp & Son, Inc. v. Puerto Rico ex rel. Barez, 458 U. S. 592, 610, n. 16 (1982); Haaland v. Brackeen, 599 U. S. ___, ___, and n. 11 (2023) (slip op., at 32, and n. 11). Or said more technically, a “State does not have standing as parens patriae to bring an action against the Federal Government.” Ibid.; see Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447, 485–486 (1923). So Missouri cannot get standing by asserting that a harm to MOHELA will harm the State’s citizens. Missouri needs to show that the harm to MOHELA produces harm to the State itself. And because, as explained above, MOHELA was set up (as corporations typically are) to insulate its creator from such derivative harm, Missouri is incapable of making that showing. See supra, at 6. The separateness, both financial and legal, between MOHELA and Missouri makes MOHELA alone the proper party.
The author of today’s opinion once wrote that a 1970s-era standing decision “became emblematic” of “how utterly manipulable” this Court’s standing law is “if not taken seriously as a matter of judicial self-restraint.” Massachusetts,
