Alito, J., dissenting
In sum, all of these authorities point, not to the majority’s new rule, but to the same ordinary questions we ask in every case—whether the plaintiff has a concrete, traceable, and redressable injury.
C
Despite the majority’s capacious understanding of executive discretion, today’s opinion assures the reader that the decision “do[es] not suggest that federal courts may never entertain cases involving the Executive Branch’s alleged failure to make more arrests or bring more prosecutions,” despite its otherwise broad language covering the “exercise of enforcement discretion over whether to arrest or prosecute.” Ante, at 5, 9. The majority lists five categories of cases in which a court would—or at least might—have Article III jurisdiction to entertain a challenge to arrest or prosecution policies, but this list does nothing to allay concern about the Court’s new path. The Court does not identify any characteristics that are shared by all these categories and that distinguish them from cases in which it would not find standing. In addition, the Court is unwilling to say that cases in four of these five categories are actually exempted from its general rule, and the one remaining category is exceedingly small. I will discuss these categories one by one.
First, the majority distinguishes “selective-prosecution” suits by a plaintiff “to prevent his or her own prosecution,” ante, at 9. But such claims are ordinarily brought as defenses in ongoing prosecutions, as in the cases the Court cites, and are rarely brought in standalone actions where a plaintiff must prove standing. This category is therefore little more than a footnote to the Court’s general rule.
Second, the majority grants that “the standing analysis might differ when Congress elevates de facto injuries to the status of legally cognizable injuries,” and it hypothesizes a situation in which Congress “(i) specifically authorize[s]
