Does a District Court have jurisdiction to enjoin the implementation of an Executive Order that provides internal directives to federal agencies without imposing legal obligations on states? Specifically, do such internal directives create concrete and imminent injuries sufficient for Article III standing or are they unripe for adjudication? Should the Supreme Court stay a lower court's injunction against these directives pending appeal?

• The District Court lacked jurisdiction because the respondent States lack Article III standing and their claims are not ripe.
• Executive Order No. 14399 consists of internal directives that impose no legal obligations or concrete harms on parties outside the Executive Branch.
• The injunction causes irreparable harm by interfering with the internal operations of the Executive Branch, specifically barring agencies from implementing presidential priorities.
• The balance of equities favors a stay because the Order makes no demand of the States and thus staying the injunction will not concretely harm them.

• Sections 2 and 3 of Executive Order No. 14399 unconstitutionally infringe upon the States' sovereign authority to administer elections.
• The States suffer a present injury because they must divert resources and begin planning now to comply with or respond to the Order.
• Section 2(b) creates a credible threat of federal investigation and prosecution for state officials who do not use the Citizenship Lists created under Section 2(a).
• The proposed rulemaking in Section 3 demands an unlawful overhaul of existing state mail-in ballot procedures.

• The Court granted the stay, finding the Government likely to succeed on the argument that the District Court lacked jurisdiction.
• Under *Carney v. Adams*, standing requires an injury that is "concrete, particularized, and imminent rather than 'conjectural or hypothetical,'" while ripeness forbids adjudicating disputes dependent on "contingent future events" (*Trump v. New York*).
• Regarding § 2(a), the Court reasoned it is an internal directive imposing no obligations on States; any predicted injury depends on a "chain of inferences" regarding how the Secretary might implement the order, which *Clapper v. Amnesty Int'l USA* deems insufficient for standing.
• The Court rejected the argument that planning costs create standing, noting that states "cannot manufacture standing merely by inficting harm on themselves based on their fears of hypothetical future harm" (*Clapper*).
• Regarding § 2(b), the Court found no "well-founded fear" of prosecution (*Virginia v. American Booksellers Assn., Inc.*) because the Order does not require States to use Citizenship Lists and mandates implementation "consistent with applicable law."
• Regarding § 3, the Court held that a directive to initiate proposed rulemaking is not a final rule and involves too many contingent future events to be ripe for review (*Long Island Care at Home, Ltd. v. Coke*).
• The Government suffers irreparable harm because the injunction "improperly intrudes on a coordinate branch" by meddling in the internal workings of the Executive Branch (*INS v. Legalization Assistance Project*; *Trump v. CASA, Inc.*).
• The balance of equities favors the Government because the Order makes no demand of the States, meaning they suffer no concrete harm from the stay.