Treasury Urges Justices to Skip Missouri’s Pandemic Aid Case

An appeals court was right to dismiss Missouri’s challenge to spending restrictions on nearly $200 billion in federal Covid-19 relief funds, the Treasury Department told the US Supreme Court Wednesday.

The department’s brief responds to Missouri’s October petition asking the high court to review a July ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit that Missouri didn’t have standing to sue because its alleged injury—"threatened unconstitutional application” of the tax offset restriction in the American Rescue Plan Act—isn’t actual or imminent.

The appeals court correctly held that Missouri can’t “challenge a hypothetical interpretation of the offset ...