If a house divided against itself cannot stand, then why would federal courts allow the United States to sue itself? It’s hard to imagine a scenario where a house could, or would, be more divided.

Yet this scenario has played out in the past, most often when executive branch agencies have tried to sue each other. And it is currently playing out with the District of Columbia’s attempts to sue the federal government.

But the whole notion is absurd.

At common law, it was clear that a person couldn’t sue himself. And Article III of our Constitution makes that clear too. There’s no case or controversy.

Think about it. If these self-suits could proceed, how could courts redress people’s grievances against themselves? By transferring money from themselves to themselves? By forcing someone to take some action their indecisive, split personality self doesn’t want to?

And yet federal courts have allowed such suits to proceed when the United States is on both sides of the “v.” To be fair, most haven’t been explicitly captioned that way—though some preposterously have been.

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Often, these debacles have involved one federal agency suing another one. The caselaw in this area is incoherent, but the consensus seems to be that two strictly executive branch agencies can’t come to court to resolve their differences. Not only is there no standing for Article III purposes because there’s no true adversity of interests (at least in the legal sense), but courts resolving these disputes would also impinge on the president’s Article II duties as the head of the executive branch.

Court opinions have been more of a mixed bag when it comes to deciding whether so-called independent agencies can sue other executive branch agencies. Some courts have allowed some of these suits to proceed, but their underlying rationales are unclear at best. Some of these cases seem to have been allowed to proceed under the theory that the federal government wasn’t the true party in interest.

Some of these cases seem to have been allowed to proceed based on the idea that “true adversity” exists because the president can’t resolve the dispute due to statutory independence protections. But, as a constitutional matter, independent agencies with such protections shouldn’t exist at all since Article II vests the president alone with the executive power of the United States.

When he was on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh recognized that only the continued existence of the Supreme Court’s questionable decision in Humphrey’s Executor (1935), which upheld Congress’s creation of independent agencies, could even hope to justify these types of interagency suits.

D.C. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao recently echoed these sentiments. She also noted that the “fact that Congress specifically created federal court jurisdiction” for the courts to hear such disputes “does not necessarily eliminate the constitutional concern because Congress cannot expand federal court jurisdiction beyond the Article III judicial power.”

The most ominous sign for supporters of these suits has been intervening Supreme Court case law, which has cast serious doubt on the continuing vitality of Humphrey’s Executor—and on the very idea of independent agencies. In fact, in light of challenges to several of President Trump’s recent executive orders and actions, the Supreme Court will likely have no choice but to explicitly address whether Humphrey’s Executor remains good law.

Still, other scholars have tried to justify interagency suits under an admittedly “novel” theory invoking Congress’s necessary and proper power under Article I of the Constitution, but this line of reasoning has rightly gained no traction.

Lawsuits between different branches of the federal government present different problems than the self-suits described above because the legislature and the executive can be at odds, but even these interbranch suits are problematic. Although some of these lawsuits have been allowed to proceed in some circumstances, judges have rightly questioned the validity of the courts wading into such disputes between the political branches.

This brings us to the curious case of the District of Columbia. The District owes its existence to Article I of the Constitution, which grants Congress the authority to establish and “exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever” over the “Seat of Government of the United States.”

From the time the District of Columbia formally became the seat of the federal government to the present day, Congress has retained this plenary control—though it has taken different (sometimes constitutionally questionable) forms over the past 225 years.

In 1973, Congress granted the District nominal “Home Rule.” But this nomenclature can be misleading because, consistent with the Constitution’s design, Congress has always retained its ultimate plenary authority over the District’s affairs.

From time-to-time, Congress has stepped in and placed controls on the District’s out-of-control spending, and it recently disapproved—through a unique review process that exists nowhere else (even for Territories over which Congress retains control but which are constitutionally distinct from the District in important ways)—the District’s radical rewrite of its criminal code.

One under-examined aspect of the District’s Home Rule has been the creation and evolution of the Office of the D.C. Attorney General. As I have noted elsewhere, the “office functions primarily as the District’s city attorney. In fact, that was historically the name for the position within the District (as well as corporation counsel or some variation).” And for those unaware, the “position was not renamed as the Attorney General until 2004, and it was not an elected position until 2014.”

The District’s current attorney general, Brian Schwalb, has chosen to pursue a number of hot-button lawsuits that will likely curry favor with his electoral base—particularly those who oppose the policies and actions of the Trump Administration.

But can he do that?

In short, probably not. The District, as a creature of the federal government, doesn’t have standing to sue the federal government. At bottom, such a lawsuit is the federal government versus the federal government.

This probably doesn’t matter for some of the suits where the District’s attorney general has simply joined a coalition of blue state attorneys general as one among many plaintiffs. Longstanding precedent and practice say that so long as one party has standing, that’s enough for the suit to proceed.

It does matter, though, for the suits where the District has decided to go it alone. Take for example its recent Superfund environmental lawsuit against the federal government, where it is seeking to force the federal government to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars for D.C. to pursue its “environmental justice” agenda. The suit faults the federal government’s management of the District dating back to the early 1800s and even takes issue with the historic “coal burning at the Capitol Power Plant” and its more recent operations, which help provide power to the U.S. Capitol Building and its surrounding office complex.

This lawsuit is particularly problematic because the whole idea behind the creation of the District was to ensure that local officials couldn’t direct or hamper federal officials in the exercise of their constitutionally prescribed duties. Congress certainly has plenary control over the Capitol Complex and its operations, as well as over the whole of the District.

The D.C. Attorney General asserts that “Plaintiff, the District of Columbia, is a municipal corporation empowered to sue and be sued.” But there’s an important caveat he left out. The relevant D.C. Code provision states that “The District is . . . constituted a body corporate for municipal purposes, and may . . . sue and be sued . . . and exercise all other powers of a municipal corporation not inconsistent with the Constitution.” And self-suits that pit one federal entity against another federal entity are inconsistent with the Constitution.

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Relatedly and revealingly, opinions issued in cases where municipalities have sued their parent states also generally point out the absurdity of such suits. While some courts have allowed some of these suits to proceed in some circumstances under federal law using different rationales—often over the state’s objections—judges have pointed out that it is troubling for a city to sue the entity to which it owes its existence (the state) and of which it is wholly a part.

Ditto for D.C. suing the federal government.

After all, D.C. prosecutions for violations of D.C. Code provisions aren’t captioned “District of Columbia v. Offender.” Instead, they’re captioned “United States v. Offender”—highlighting that federal authority backs up and pulses through any actions the District or its officials take.

Many lawmakers are frustrated with the District’s officials—particularly its attorney general—and their actions. Rather than focusing on combatting surging violent juvenile crime, Schwalb has focused on supporting radical policies such as providing “guidance” to D.C. entities on how much (or how little) they have to cooperate with immigration enforcement efforts. And he has spent his time on bringing lawsuits like the ones discussed here—many of which are politically motivated exercises rather than true cases or controversies.

Actions like these have led some like Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) to call for Congress to more directly assert its existing authority over the District. It’s not a crazy idea. Would it really take more of the federal government’s time to directly oversee the District’s affairs than to deal with shakedowns like the Superfund lawsuit? Surely not. Thanks to Schwalb’s partisan actions, that’s now more apparent than ever.

And the U.S. Justice Department, in defending that suit on behalf of the federal government, would be right to point out the absurdity—and unconstitutionality—of allowing a lawsuit that’s by the federal government against the federal government to proceed.