Not too long ago — or at least back when I took a law-school course on federal jurisdiction — any federal judge would have promptly tossed out such a claim as a non-justiciable political dispute between two branches of government. But “the House has suffered a concrete, particularized injury that gives it standing to sue,” Judge Collyer said. Last month, the judge refused the administration’s urgent request to authorize an appeal of the standing question, announcing instead that she would hear the case, United States House of Representatives v. Burwell, on its merits next year.

And then this week came the Fifth Circuit’s immigration decision. The claim of Texas and its allies to standing is preposterous. The Fifth Circuit majority found that the state’s concrete injury lies in the fact that some 500,000 undocumented Texas residents would be entitled under the deferral program to obtain drivers’ licenses, and the state, which charges $25 for a six-year license, would lose “a minimum of $130.89” on each license. “Even a modest estimate would put the loss at several million dollars.” Hmmm. My own user-friendly state of Connecticut charges $66 for an ordinary driver’s license and offers undocumented immigrants a drive-only license (legal authorization to drive, but not to be used for identification) for a $72 fee. I guess the great state of Texas would rather fight the federal government than figure out how to balance its motor vehicle department’s books.

The government had argued in its brief that whatever Texas loses on issuing licenses it would more than gain on car registration fees, other driver-related expenditures, and the obvious fact that immigrants with deferred deportation would be able to work openly and pay taxes. (Attorney General Kamala Harris of California made this point in a conference call discussion on Tuesday, noting that California, with more immigrants than any other state, expected to reap sizable financial benefits from the deferred deportation program.)

The Fifth Circuit rejected the government’s argument, saying that “none of the benefits the government identifies is sufficiently connected to the costs to qualify as an offset.” In 2002, a lifetime ago in judicial politics, the same Fifth Circuit (different judges) denied standing to taxpayers who challenged a Louisiana law that authorized special license plates with the slogan “Choose Life,” while not authorizing an equivalent slogan for abortion rights. The Fifth Circuit said then that the plaintiffs could claim no injury because any extra cost of the special plates would be offset by the extra fee the state charged for them. Times change.

In its analysis of the states’ standing, the Fifth Circuit majority relied heavily on a 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, that accorded the state standing to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency’s refusal to regulate motor vehicle emissions linked to climate change. Massachusetts had argued that as a predictable result of climate change, its coastline would be eroded by rising seawater. But in her dissenting opinion on Monday, Judge King pointed out that the Clean Air Act, under which Massachusetts had brought suit, specifically authorized lawsuits for a refusal to regulate, while there is no such authorization in the immigration law. Chief Justice Roberts wrote a vigorous dissent in the Massachusetts case in which he described standing as “a fundamental limitation ensuring that courts function as courts, and not intrude on the politically accountable branches.” Justice Antonin Scalia has also taken a classically strict view of standing. These two justices will soon have a chance to show whether they still mean it.

The administration’s deferred action program was announced a year ago in a memorandum by Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security. The five-page memo, which Judge King attached to her dissenting opinion, described deferred action as “a form of prosecutorial discretion.” This use of administrative discretion in immigration enforcement dates to the 1960s, Mr. Johnson noted. The difference here was that a specific class of people — otherwise law-abiding parents of American-born or legal-resident children — would be eligible for a three-year deferral of deportation if they applied for it, passed a background check, and paid a fee of $465. In other words, nothing is automatic. There is no waving of a magic wand for the entire class; each applicant has to pass individually through the gateway that the program establishes.

The memo concluded: “This memorandum confers no substantive right, immigration status or pathway to citizenship. Only an Act of Congress can confer these rights. It remains within the authority of the executive branch, however, to set forth policy for the exercise of prosecutorial discretion and deferred action within the framework of existing law. This memorandum is an exercise of that authority.”