Seems impossible to square this ruling with Section 1001(3) of the ICA, which says “Nothing contained in this Act, or in any amendments made by this Act, shall be construed as affecting in any way the claims or defenses of any party to litigation concerning any impoundment.”
These two paragraphs are just utterly incoherent. “there could be an APA cause of action—but we infer from the ICA there is not. True, the ICA has language expressly saying this interpretation is incorrect, but what if it maybe meant something else?”
So say judge chatGPT
Obviously, finding standing under pre-ICA was sometimes difficult. But there were many, many, many cases against Nixon where they found standing. Insane to say all that standing is now gone for suits under the ICA — especially when the ICA explicitly says it doesn’t get rid of standing!!!!
It's crazy how many conservative judges see a statute (or indeed constitutional amendment) whose obvious, clear, stated goal l is to make it EASIER for people to hold the government accountable and then say that oh actually this makes it HARDER to hold the government accountable.
Henderson and Katsas were never gonna find standing here.
So any money he impounds is just fine because the only person that can sue is a lackey appointed by him? How does that even make sense.