Berger v. North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP

The North Carolina legislature satisfied the requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(a)(2) because it possessed a direct interest in the redistricting statute at issue, as the body responsible for drawing the congressional map, it had a concrete stake in defending the constitutionality of its own enactment. The Court determined that the existing defendant, the state Attorney General, could not adequately represent the legislature's interest, since the Attorney General had affirmatively declined to appeal and defend the law, demonstrating an actual conflict between the executive's litigation position and the legislature's desire to vindicate the statute. By refusing to defend despite being a named defendant, the Attorney General created precisely the inadequacy of representation that Rule 24(a)(2) contemplates, a situation where an existing party's interests diverged from the intervenor's. The majority therefore concluded that North Carolina law vested the legislature with independent authority to represent the state's institutional interest in the validity of its laws when the executive branch abdicated that defense.